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[A] The Agency GAME OVER -- AGENTS WIN

Looking good, taking names, saving the world. 🙂

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The ending was just sad. I couldn't do anything. I wanted to put Wood and Fenris in to allow for some ambiguity as to who the infiltrator is but that team would have been shut down pretty quickly.
 
TechGod said:
The ending was just sad. I couldn't do anything. I wanted to put Wood and Fenris in to allow for some ambiguity as to who the infiltrator is but that team would have been shut down pretty quickly.
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I give you props for at least trying right up until the end. You were at a disadvantage due to the plots we were able to get and use early without having to blow a mission. Also, all the agents were very active throughout. I like your "can I have a go at leader?" at the end, lol.
 
To my fellow infiltrators, the whole "the infils have played a weak game" thing was a last ditch effort at a misdirect. I think, for the most part, we did as well as we could.
 
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Queen of Spades said:
I give you props for at least trying right up until the end. You were at a disadvantage due to the plots we were able to get and use early without having to blow a mission. Also, all the agents were very active throughout. I like your "can I have a go at leader?" at the end, lol.
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I think that really reeked of desperation😀
 
Okay I'm back, but I'm stuffed to the point of exploding, and am ready to pass out in a food coma.

But before that, some analysis of the rules:

Firstly, I really like @WoodNUFC's suggestion of having 3, 4 then 5 teams for the first, second and third turns. That would make things more interesting, I think.

Since that does give the agents an advantage, I think the 2 failures required for the fourth and fifth missions should be dropped. What do you think?

From this point onwards, the plot distribution will be restricted to three per turn, not per leader. This would guarantee that only 15 plots would be given out per game, which will make things more fair for the infiltration. Also, I think 'role' is a more appropriate name for those than 'plots'? Originally I was thinking of the game as a 'plot', and if the plot goes entirely predictably, the infiltrators win, but there's several 'twists' that changes the course of the plot, hence the plots. But the more I think about it, I realize they're really just roles (as in the [WW] games), but in a different, more temporal, form. In fact, I'm actually thinking about having the next game be based on the [WW] game world. That would be interesting!

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble. I'm off to bed -- I look forward to running the next, improved, game!
 
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TechGod said:
The ending was just sad. I couldn't do anything. I wanted to put Wood and Fenris in to allow for some ambiguity as to who the infiltrator is but that team would have been shut down pretty quickly.
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The fact you put in Koodauw rather than Wood kept me guessing about which of those two were an infiltrator.
 
As I remember the card game version does what wood says starting with 3 agents then 4 then 5 but only has the requirement for 2 failure votes for mission 4. I think either starting with a small team size and increasing or moving the 2 failure votes requirement from missions 4/5 to missions 1/2 or 2/3 would help balance and keep the tension more to the end. As it was it we had effectively won by mission 3 and getting mission 4 was never in any doubt and I think the same would have been true of a infiltrator victory - if they hadn't got their 3 missions early on it would have been increasingly unlikely for them to do so.

Also agree that being able to get the plots out early through using no confidence needs to be prevented - it turned the balance way too much in favor of the agents as we were able to use a lot of plots to get information. One option could be that any unused plots that were distributed get returned to the new leader to be redistributed when no confidence cancels the mission.

I think spy should be able to be used anytime - with the current rules it wouldn't be able to be used if it came out on the last mission.

I like the fact that it keeps everyone involved till the end. Always feel sorry for those that die early in WW games.
 
Well played everyone. Congrats to the agents, you certainly used everything at your disposal to get the win. I agree that the rules definitely favor the agents and think the no confidence plot needs to be adjusted. I have other thoughts as well, but it's late and I need to sleep. To my fellow infiltrators thanks for a good game. I think we did okay. Not sure I understand Astroboys moves, but hey you can only do what you think is best. It is really hard to work as a team when you can't communicate behind the scenes to actually collaborate.
 
@mscriv
Yeah, the lack of PM's really threw me off. It was a couple hours after I selected the team with you in it that I finally got your hint to not put you in but it was already too late! I felt pretty awful 🙁

In terms of gameplay, roles were really hard to distribute as an infiltrator without drawing too much attention - I felt for sure someone was going to make a huge deal of giving WoodNUFC strong leader but that didn't happen until later.

Also, my sincerest apologies to everyone playing, especially @FenrisMoonlight for the wasted card against DP. At the time I considered it the best option because it wouldn't have cleared an additional player or expose me as an infi, which would've happened anyways if I didn't use it. I figured you would be suspicious of QoS, but Moyank figured that out pretty quick. Either way, I figured it would be worth it to try to play it off in the rare event that you would believe my excuses. So sorry for acting like a complete idiot and, well, a$$. The idiot part was unfortunately, not too much acting 😛

Good game!
 
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Good game. Glad the bad boys enjoyed it too. Some balancing adjustments and this will be just great, especially since it works with so few players.
 
Well done everyone
This was fun
A lot of work, though, i think it requires significant more commitment than the WW games.
At the end the multiple no confidence helps agents clearly too much, so i agree to go just 3 for mission, not for trial.
This will swing things considerably into the infiltrators' direction, so the proposed 3-4-5"-5-5 crew would be good. I put a single 'double fail' mission as #3, so it is guaranteed to be in play, and prevent a possible quick 3-0 win by the infiltrators.
The timing of playing the plots should also be tweaked

Terminology: infiltrators is cumbersome, maybe just spys?
And instead of plots i would go for 'actions' or just 'cards'
 
I agree with what's been said so far. The balance is off, but that can be tweaked as we go forward.

The double fail mission(s) should be rounds 3 and 4 in my mind. As @Don't panic says, round 3 forces it into play. We might want to keep the second double fail round so things don't get too easy for the infils, but that can be up to the GG.

I also agree that we can change the terminology to spy from infiltrator.
 
Astroboy907 said:
@mscriv
Yeah, the lack of PM's really threw me off. It was a couple hours after I selected the team with you in it that I finally got your hint to not put you in but it was already too late! I felt pretty awful 🙁

In terms of gameplay, roles were really hard to distribute as an infiltrator without drawing too much attention - I felt for sure someone was going to make a huge deal of giving WoodNUFC strong leader but that didn't happen until later.

Also, my sincerest apologies to everyone playing, especially @FenrisMoonlight for the wasted card against DP. At the time I considered it the best option because it wouldn't have cleared an additional player or expose me as an infi, which would've happened anyways if I didn't use it. I figured you would be suspicious of QoS, but Moyank figured that out pretty quick. Either way, I figured it would be worth it to try to play it off in the rare event that you would believe my excuses. So sorry for acting like a complete idiot and, well, a$$. The idiot part was unfortunately, not too much acting 😛

Good game!
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@Astroboy907, the DP ID move completely threw me. You had the team's trust during that one round and it looked as though they were going to put the mission through if you had cleared someone as asked. Then you could have failed the mission and outed yourself that way. The way I saw it you were outed either way so why not get a point for us in the process. Anyhow, that might not have worked either, so who knows. No worries friend. Like I said before you can only do the best that you can do and this was everyones first time playing this game.

I'm worried about the balance of voting and the "QOS" rule as I affectionately called it. 😉 Basically, I'm not certain how spies can hide more than one or two rounds and how missions will get put through. If everyone who is an agent says I'm going to vote fail on the missions where I'm not on the team then any spy who does vote yay to put a team through (that they are not on) is immediately exposed. In WW games, baddies can hide because there are so many voting options. It's easy to pick a random person to vote for in the early rounds and then adjust your voting as bandwagons start. With this game there are only two voting options. As so many players pointed out this first time through, agents have no incentive to put a team through if they are not on it and the penalty rule being 5 in a row seems high and easily manipulated. Maybe the way No Confidence was used in this first game is throwing off my ability to really judge this part of the game, but I just think once we get past round one anyone who votes yay to put a mission through is going to immediately be labelled a spy and that seems off to me.

@WoodNUFC, with your experience of the game do spies generally try to hide the whole game or are they only wanting to hide long enough to earn a point for their team and then they essentially play no role for the remainder of the game because they are exposed?

I understand that in the live action game the spies can't communicate except through non-verbals. Since we are doing this in an online forum format I'm wondering if we shouldn't allow the spies to PM with each other? It was so challenging not being able to formulate a strategy with my fellow spies. Without collaboration every move becomes a guess. And, this is made even harder when you factor in not knowing if someone is paying attention because of real world priorities and distractions. To me, since so much is public in this game the strategy of the spies is much more of a "house of cards" than it is in a WW game. One false move could easily out multiple team members.

I did enjoy playing and think the format of this game is viable, but we need to get the balance right. Thanks so much to @ravenvii for introducing us to a new game. 🙂
 
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I think the fact that you guys had an almost perfect team to start with, helped the Agency. I don't thin kthe spy should PM each other, because if you have 3 spys in one team and just one fail a mission, then it's way harder for the Agency to find those spies. It's a matter of trying to state your fellow camarade that you will fail that mission, so communication on the board is primordial. This participation is still mandatory even when your out, because you need to build a team even if your a spy, and you can distribute the cards to anyone, so you can still mess the game up.

I don't think we should modify that game that much beside the cards distribution. As an outsider the game was nicely played.
 
mscriv said:


[USER=310340]@WoodNUFC, with your experience of the game do spies generally try to hide the whole game or are they only wanting to hide long enough to earn a point for their team and then they essentially play no role for the remainder of the game because they are exposed?

I understand that in the live action game the spies can't communicate except through non-verbals. Since we are doing this in an online forum format I'm wondering if we shouldn't allow the spies to PM with each other? It was so challenging not being able to formulate a strategy with my fellow spies. Without collaboration every move becomes a guess. And, this is made even harder when you factor in not knowing if someone is paying attention because of real world priorities and distractions. To me, since so much is public in this game the strategy of the spies is much more of a "house of cards" than it is in a WW game. One false move could easily out multiple team members.
[/USER]
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In my experience the spies try to hide as long as possible. Once they are outed, they become a non-factor in the game. By that I mean, if you are outed, then lead a mission, the team will certainly be voted down before it can get to the action stage. No one will select an outed spy either.

I don't really like the idea of the spies communicating during the game. I think it makes them a bit too strong. Part of the fun is trying to get a disparate group to act for a common goal. I think the added freedom to choose strategy is a fun perk. It also requires extra thinking, because a single misstep can out the entire ring of spies.

Maybe we could have 2 of the spies be able to communicate through PM--like a spy/handler situation?
 
Think it should be tried without PM since this differentiates it quite a bit from the regular WW games. If other balancing measures really don't prove strong enough, which I doubt, than we can still add that element.
 
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