Mock round questionnaire

[foundationmods]

Hey there! With the mock round over, we wanted to get your opinions on what worked and what didn't work. We're going to be tooling with the game mechanics we tested out in preparation for round 3, so your input here is valuable! Just fill out the questions below and let us know your thoughts.

If you did not participate in the mock round but followed along and want to give your opinions, then you are welcome to do so!

Questionnaire

1: What are your thoughts on the truth system? Was it easy to understand and use? Or do you think any part of it needs to be changed to make it work better? (we do plan on using the mock round for examples of how the trials will go, so people apping in to round 3 will have examples to base their trials on.)

2: Given the nature of how the trials work (magical explanations vs mundane ones), do you think the mock round worked better with all powers off, or with powers on? Which way do you think would be better to go with for round 3? (this would only affect round 3, and not subsequent rounds.)

3: Do you like the new start time for investigations? (noon EST on Friday instead of 6pm) Or should we go back to the old time?

4: Any other comments or critique about the mock round (and what to do for round 3) should go here.

Comments

[very_good_end]

Substitute player here! So my answers should be taken with a grain of salt.

1. I admit I wasn't around to really use it too much but I'm also umineko-familiar.

2. I think it might work better with powers off because it'd be too easy for a person to use some power and not admit they have that power? If it was non-obvious. Or, the opposite, where they use a power only they have, and then people discover it and come to the conclusion "Well, it's got to be the one guy who can do that."

3. PLEASE PUSH IT BACK TO 6PM EST! Or even 3 pm EST? I am a poor PST person with a weird schedule who isn't used to waking up early enough to make a 12pm noon EST start-time. ;; I'll fully admit to being biased.

4. I think perhaps investigation should be stretched out over two days, or the way information is provided should be changed.
There was a situation where I wanted to investigate more with my character, but at the same time I wanted to tag other characters for normal rping purposes. This split my mental faculties, and I couldn't do both effectively, I think.
Two solutions:
a. Make investigation last two days, enough for people to tag, look over all the potential information provided by the mods, then write responses like: "Okay, I also investigate whether 'this' and 'this' is possible." Then this gives the mods a chance to wake up the next day and see the investigation back-tags.
b. When people discover an item, give them absolutely every detail they could feasibly detect from it, and let them decide individually how much their character actually notices based on their character's intellect, ability to inspect, or how much they actually care about the thing. That is, something like: "You find a boot with caked on mud. If you physically take it and compare it to the bootprint outside in the mud, you'll find it's a match. If you compare the mud on the boot to the bootprint outside, you'll find they're different types of dirt." Etc. etc. Okay, maybe this isn't the best solution. Maybe there should be a point the mods say "You've learned everything you can about this item."

[accitio]

Number 4 broaches something I was thinking about adding to my crit but ultimately didn't 'cause I was on the fence about it. Two days does feel a little long but at the same time, there's a lot to sort through during investigations. I don't mind games where evidence can be missed but without the ability to do checks or search for evidence in trial, it can put more pressure on players not to miss anything so they'll want to be more thorough. Being more thorough means spending more time on investigations, so they'll naturally run longer (and, thinking of it now, I think I prefer noon instead of 6pm for this reason—though it also depends on which timezone is most common among your playerbase. I do feel bad for people like Cally who are PST if you go with noon, but I've seen some investigations last until 8PM or 10PM and if you push that same amount of time with a 6PM investigation, you're gonna run into the early AM hours like midnight and 2AM).

Investigations going long is especially true because you can't do checks or collect more evidence at trial. When you have trial as leeway, I think having a short amount of time or being less thorough while investigating is okay. Or at least not as potentially harmful. But since that isn't the case here, it is going to be harder to either think of what we might possibly need to check for (also note, some players won't want to do every check simply because they're afraid of finding the culprit early). Especially if characters want to do room searches for 20 people. That's something players need to coordinate among themselves, of course, but it's still a significant time investment that can take away from investigating other areas.

This seems like a good place to add this too, but I think adding in alibis to the Truth Bullets will simultaneously complicate it but also help make it so solving the timeline solves the "who?" That said, there's not really a good way to collect alibis for a massive group of people. Particularly when you give them the good ahead to post whatever they want—in my experience, alibis are most thorough when they're submitted to mods for approval. Otherwise, players tend to be vague because they don't want to overlap with the culprit and that makes them pretty useless.

I guess this is like like a +0.5?

Since I'm here, I think I wanna weigh in on Cally's B point too. I don't necessarily think you have to give everything on a piece of evidence without prompting, but I noticed you guys rolled to see how much someone got (I think from the body?) and I'm not sure that's a good idea. I don't want to go on too long about it since I'm mostly just adding opinions onto Cally's crit, but sometimes players want to check for evidence or check the body when their character isn't necessarily suited for it. Sometimes it's because they want to try it 'cause it looks fun, sometimes it's because another player with a suitable character isn't around. I know by rolling you guys mean to give players a chance to get additional information they wouldn't get otherwise, but at the same time it feels like it's punishing players too if a character more qualified just... happens to not be around because of OOC reasons.

If it helps, one of the things I kept in mind while running investigations in Uki was "characters have eyes." This is a written hobby, yes, but those words are being used to paint a picture of a scene. If the words you're using aren't depicting things that should be immediately obvious to anyone looking at it, it's best to consider rephrasing. There is some leeway here though. Like, obviously most people can't tell the difference between postmortem wounds and antemortem, but in those scenarios you can describe them in a way where it's obvious that's what happened. Other players/other characters can then pick up on those descriptions when the character describes it to them later, even if the character that originally investigated didn't realize themselves what was up.