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

Forgive me, I am bad at explaining.

[beastlybruno]

1. It was fine for me, I think! Though you might need to make it clear that the truths manifest as weapons somewhere.

2. I honestly would prefer the powers to be turned off. It's a little easier to work with, for me.

3. YES please keep it

4. I had a little trouble coming up with toplevels for this mock round, though that may be on me because I lost steam with Bruno near the end. Also, I would very much like to keep my reserve. Wheatley is definitely going up against the witch!

[moes]

Hi mods!

Len here, speaking as a spectator: I'll be skipping most of the questions and focusing on answering both the second and third questions as someone planning on bringing someone into round three.

In regards of the trials, personally for this round I do have a huge preference for having no powers on. While powers can create good cases in of itself (props to the second week case for mock, by the way) it also 1) undermines potential for closed room cases, which are practically the bread and butter of Umineko, as characters in the round proper might have teleportation abilities which can be used as easy Blue Truth theories and 2) solvability means that all characters ICly will need to know what powers the characters have in order to potentially submit a Blue Truth that works.

As for the trial time, 12 PM EST definitely works better for me for the round proper than the old time, but that's just a personal preference.

I think that's all I got on my end. Thank you so much everyone for making this mock round fun to spectate and here's to a successful main round; I'm really excited to see what you guys push out!

[enter_the_darkness]

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.)

It was very easy to understand, after watching it get put into practice! This was incredibly fun to watch, in fact, even if I'm sad I didn't get to do one.

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.)

I had more fun with the powers on. I didn't see a huge difference with trial, either way. Both ended with culprit getting caught.

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?

I'm okay with either time, so long as it's established ahead of time.

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

Iiiiiii did not appreciate such a drastic last minute (night before) change with investigation, the first time. Six hours is a huge difference to run with on such short notice, and something closer to middle ground could have made it fairer, I think.

(And, on another personal note, I would have been incredibly sad to have to miss the investigation I had a hand in making happen.)

That said, I do understand that we need majority there for these things. Maybe you guys could put the calendar in a place that's a little difficult to miss, and then link it in the announcements at the start of each round?

In any case, I HAD A LOT OF FUN!!! You guys are such a blast to work with and learn from, honestly. Thank you both for all your hard work, and THANK YOU, ESKI, FOR MAKING THOSE TRIALS WHAT THEY WERE. You did a phenomenal job at running them, and I am so excited for the upcoming round! ♥

[helmdivide]

1. I don't know how much I can word this. I had a lot of fun. It was fun watching to see what happens and having examples now actually helps a lot.

2. It didn't really change either way. I think they could make for an interesting case (think of ice magic), but like either way?

3. Yes I do.

4. I'm a potato. (I might come back to this later if I can think of anything)

[strawberryshortcackle]

Quick mention right away that we're gonna do like we did last round and have a big block of links in the mingle post every week, and that'll include the calendar! We just didn't do it this round due to being like 'hgggh that's a lot of upkeep for something that's gonna run just two weeks man', but it'll definitely be more visible for r3.

[enter_the_darkness]

\o/

Awesome! That'll definitely help, I think.

[accitio]

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? I don't think it's beginner-friendly at all. It's an interesting system and I see a lot of creative potential but at the end of the day, it's mostly used to confirm the means which... almost wraps up trials in a lot of red tape? Not to mention I feel like six hours is not enough time to discuss a timeline with everyone, what points to someone, and present it all to the NPC for scrutinizing. Both during Trial 1 and Trial 2 people went down to the wire and had pretty simple rundowns of events when they presented theories. That's probably going to keep happening unless cases are really, really simple which means you'll probably have to accept whatever theory people throw out since everyone's more or less going to present in the last ten minutes. They will very rarely, if ever, present anything earlier. Even extending by an hour might help give more of a buffer, 'cause it isn't that I saw anyone wasting time. It was more that they had to rush at the end.

I also feel that six hours makes it more pressuring to stick around for the full time instead of being able to go off and take a break if you need one. In a way, I feel like the six-hour time frame is almost repeating one of your mistakes from Round 2 with the thirty-minute lightning rounds. It doesn't give players a lot of time to digest, so they very easily can become overwhelmed or feel anxious. That wasn't as much the case this time because both cases were pretty simple, but I'm assuming the cases in the actual round will be harder.

I also want to say... one of the things I've noticed in all the murdergames is people have the most difficulty pointing fingers. I’ve heard a number of players, numerous veterans even, express gratitude when other people name a culprit because they had an idea but either ICly their character wouldn’t present or OOC they were too nervous to push a theory since they didn’t want to be wrong. I don’t feel you guys are accounting for the pressure players will OOC feel because of trials or their reluctance to present not one but three bullets that might end up being rejected.

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? ... Powers off. I think if you aren't going to have IC profiles of any kind and you want people to IC solve satisfactorily, it's going to be extremely difficult to do that with powers/magic. For example, I know at one point during the second trial people thought Silver may have flown over the blood trail. That's only one possible explanation for why there might not be a trail (wall-crawling ala spider-man, intangibility/walking through walls, telekinesis/levitation, teleportation, wind magic, blood magic, and more) and trying to solve a timeline that may contain one of these when characters don't know each other's abilities seems like a headache.

And, as great as Takashi was and as much fun as I had working with Jess, I'm not sure Takashi was an accurate gauge of how powers/magic would work in the game because he only had summoning and no additional powers. In the round, it seems like it would be better to stick with no powers due to the problems you might face in handling characters with more varied kits. I know some people are saying they didn't see a difference but I think that's because, for the most part, it really wasn't a difference because Takashi just didn't have any powers beyond summoning...

Powers can add creativity to cases, it's true, but the cons for people who want to solve outweigh the pros.

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? I don't have a preference, this is probably something you should ask everyone planning on participating in Round 3, actually. I changed my mind. Noon, please.

4: Any other comments or critique about the mock round (and what to do for round 3) should go here. I'm just going to do these in bullet points so I can be concise, I apologize in advance if these come out really curt/blunt. I don't mean any harm by it, I had fun in the round and with the system but there are definitely things that could use some tweaking.

• I know you guys want to have culprits pick their victims so you don’t run into a situation where ICly friends kill each other and to try minimizing accidental murders, but I think especially because of how the trials work here and how much effort it’s going to take to solve them, you need to be mindful that the most proactive people in trial are going to be taken out first. I know you guys want to build difficult cases and make trials hard (and you've said multiple times we should try to pick smart characters 'cause it'll matter), but if you lose some of those smart characters early because of this system it’s almost like punishing players. Both for being proactive and for choosing someone smart, which feels a little unfair when you've been suggesting we pick smart characters since Round 2 ended. Not to mention it might make other people wary of applying themselves at trial because they might just be targeted next.
  
  This is something I was always going to leave crit on but, l-laughs... It was already pretty much proven true when Lunafreya was picked. I don't mind at all and Jess was wonderful to work with (if anything, I feel bad I didn't do enough to help), but if you're trying to get people to pick smart characters then it might not be a good idea to let them all die off early for being proactive.
• This is more of a concern for the mod side of things, admittedly. I don’t know how you’re planning to do the trials with two witches so maybe you already have it figured out and my concerns are unwarranted. If so, feel free to ignore this. This is mostly me wondering how you guys are going to handle the two witches at trial. If you guys are planning to alternate trials (so Witch 1 takes one trial, Witch 2 takes the next, Witch 1 takes the one after that, and so on) this isn’t much of a concern, but if both witches are going to handle responding to Truth Bullets during the same trial, how are you going to organize who releases what information? If you guys are repeating information or phrasing things in contradictory ways, it’ll be hard for players to figure things out. During the first mock trial I was concentrating on trying to answer Lambdadelta and inadvertently missed that I was repeating a question ‘cause I wasn’t watching flatview as closely. It’s easy to lose track of stuff so if you guys don’t have a system in place for keeping tabs on what you have and haven’t said, it might be a good idea to think of one.
• I don't know how to say this, to be honest, but um... Please be careful of meta clues. The “SO|” in the first case was a clue that told us OOC who the culprit was. IC, however, characters would not have access to this knowledge. Riku might have told them who Sora was but there was no reason for anyone to link Vanitas to the name. If Riku told someone Vanitas looks like Sora, that would be one thing. But no one here met Sora, no one saw a picture of him afaik (which could have been a good use of Riku’s regain, in hindsight). Additionally, there were many other ways to interpret the letters and a Red Truth never confirmed Riku wrote the message so it was far from damning IC. The timeline didn't point to Vanitas at all (at most you might be able to say that the multiple stab wounds/gunshot wounds pointed to someone callous but that's actually a reach to apply to Vanitas when no one knew each other well and one really vague personality trait is not good as a standalone clue). When I went to write the theory down for the first trial, I tried to think of a way to link it back to Vanitas and everything I thought to write felt very... flimsy. Anything I thought of was reasoning that could be applied to other characters and it made me really unsatisfied with the write-up itself. We spent so much time trying to figure out the timeline (when nothing in the timeline hinted at the culprit) that we, frankly, didn’t get much more than an hour tops to spend on trying to figure out who actually did it.
  
  Oh. And I remember you guys mentioned in chat we were missing an important clue from the narration; I’m assuming you guys meant the clue about Lambadelta appearing in darkness. I think the reason it was overlooked was because IC I'm not sure if anyone was aware of that being of Vanitas’ powers, though I imagine Riku would have picked up on it right away had he not been the victim. It was a nice tie to Vanitas but it was another meta clue that not every character would've picked up on.
• A bit related to the above since this is about Trial 1. Also found that a lot of the Red Truth evidence related a lot to the sequence of events but in the scheme of things, it felt like some of them didn’t really matter (e.g. whether the gunshots or the stabbing came first didn’t really actually help much for profiling the culprit ICly). And while it’s understandable that the Red Truths are are dependent on what Blue Truths the characters posit, at a certain point it was decided that enough Red Truths were given out to figure out what happened in the case, even though most of those Truths didn’t lead to the identity of the culprit.
• I don't know where to put this but, uh... Please don’t do two cases at once with this system. That sounds like a nightmare to solve in six hours. A double with one culprit sounds okay but double culprits feels like it would be extremely difficult.

I have more thoughts but I think this is the bulk of what I wanted to say. I know it leans more negative but there were a lot of things I saw that were good! I just know you guys were looking for feedback with mock so I was trying to focus more on that than anything else, but as with Round 2 I found how ambitious you guys got with personal touches really impressive! Like the stories at trial, those were great and a very nice parallel to the executions culprits get! Usually the victims time to shine is the body discovery but those are rarely given the same amount of detail as executions so incorporating a little story for them at the beginning of trial is really nice. You also tried to give everyone at least something in explorations/investigations, even when there wasn't too much to find.

Thank you for your time! And thank you for hosting this game to begin with, it's always nice to see people trying something different when it comes to murdergames!

[dawnwardspiral]

1: I thought it was fairly interesting and unique. It's difficult to pick up on, personally speaking, so it might be best to also ease people who are going to be playing in the main round into it. And then of course take off the training wheels once week 2 passes on by since I think it'd take about two weeks or so for people to properly acclimate, not to mention there being a bigger crowd with this, heh.

Examples are good, but experience is the true teacher.

As a whole, as long as people are able to debunk that the murder committed was 'fantasy' style by naming a culprit in theories in blue like how we've done in week 1 or 2, I don't think there'll be much trouble I'd have with it (I'm not so good at just proving that events weren't just mystical all on it's own, for the record) If that's not possible and things become more strict with that, I might have an issue with it, but so far I've seen nothing to indicate such.

2: Because there are no IC profiles, I'd like for powers to either be completely off - as much as I enjoyed them. It brings too many possibilities into a trial that must be accounted for due to the likelihood of people not knowing who has what powers in a murdergame-style roleplay. It'd be different if it were, like, mafia-style which is based less on clues left behind by characters, but as this is, I feel like there must be something that would either indicate the type of abilities some characters may have or nothing at all. In the interest of fairness, and because of there being such a larger crowd.

3. I prefer 6pm EST since I would have more a chance to be present due to the necessity of work, but at the end of the day, I don't really care since I'll always be available for trial. Whatever would be most convenient without inconveniencing the majority of players is what I would like to favor in the end.

4: Nothing else that I can think of personally that's new imo, so that's about the size of things from my point of view. I'm excited about playing in round 3 and hope to see y'all there!

[amburere]

Hello! I am a spectator of the past 2 rounds, but someone who's really looking forward to joining r3. That being said, if I am off base here because I don't have SCP experience I apologize.

1.) I have concerns about the penalty mechanic with truths given the time constraints. I understand why it's there (so people don't just solve by process of elimination) but with having to solve for the entire timeline also as a requirement (if I'm not mistaken) it seems a bit harsh. I think it also feeds into the "I better not speak up unless I'm sure I'm right!" aspect of trials. I could be completely off base here because I'm not sure how long the penalties were not being in the discord.

I also think that having the entire timeline of a case isn't necessary. Sometimes you may wind up at the answer for any number of reasons and I think that's OK. Additionally, I've found that sometimes killers do things that fall less on the logic side and more of the quirks for the individual characters, which can be hard to suss out on the timeline.

2.) Powers off unless there is a profile system in place. Characters can and will lie about their powers (I'm only capable of wind magic, when they in fact have access to all elemental magic), and not every character will showboat their powers in public view. It also puts more pressure on those with more cr with that character to solve, as naturally they would know more about their powers than someone who hasn't interacted with them.

3.) No preference, but it might be worth polling after reserves have been finalized.

4.) Nope! Working with new mechanics is an exciting thing to see, and I hope to be able to join you in r3 to play with them!

[curryparty]

1. I found the truth system okay enough to understand, but that's because past experience with murdergames made it so I pretty much liken it to bolding theories in trials. I'd definitely give some clear examples for murdergame newbies, especially highlighting not only how careful one must be about reading red truths, but also how careful one must be about writing blue truths.

2. Definitely powers off. Proving a witch with magical powers did not commit a murder that was still done with magical powers could be extremely difficult depending on what powers go through, especially since I presume most smart characters would be hiding their skillsets to make it more difficult to lead back to them.

3. I have a wide availability but that's just me. I think you should probably confirm what time works best for the actual round's players!

4. I would also make sure that the players are aware that all investigations for new clues must be completed during the investigation and that you cannot check for more things during the trial itself. Each game does it a bit differently, so making sure that everyone's on the same page is important imo since both cases this slipped our minds as players, whoops.

I had a lot of fun even with how short mock round was, and I'm looking forward to spectating when the real thing occurs :3c

[iblistriggered]

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?
It seemed pretty straightforward once we got to see it in action. I think having the mock trials as examples will be very helpful! It’s definitely not the easiest system to master, so some training wheels may be helpful for the first one or two trials — depending on how many people who were in the mock return for the main round. Obviously if there’s a ton of mock players, we don’t necessarily need to take it easy longer than a single trial.

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 is a toughie because the murder and trial during power week didn’t really utilize any supernatural elements that weren’t otherwise available to everyone. However! I do think powers would be great — it adds another level of difficulty and fun to the cases. However, if powers were in place, it would be imperative that there be some sort of IC profile so every character knows, or at least has a concept of, what every other character is capable of. Because in a non-powered trial, everyone knows (in general) what a human is capable of. Some people may be better at gymnastics or climbing buildings or picking locks, but these are all things that are known to be within the realm of possibility. So, powers would have to be known to be a possibility. This could be made easier by limited powers, maybe just one specific thing per character? Or getting rid of them entirely.

I suppose it also sort of matters what the end goal of the trial is. Is it to find the true killer? Or is it just to create a narrative that breaks the Witch’s story, regardless of if we get the real culprit or not (in which case, getting the real killer is just a bonus)? Powers are more acceptable in the latter case than the former.

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?
I work on Fridays pretty much all the time. If I’m not, it’s because I’m going on vacation or otherwise away. So it doesn’t really matter to me. What does matter is changing times on short notice without posting it somewhere, like announcements or plurk. IIRC, the change in timing was never announced anywhere except the main discord channel, where it’d get lost pretty easily.

4: Any other comments or critique about the mock round (and what to do for round 3) should go here.
Not that I can think of!! I had a ton of fun! Thanks Eski for the great writing.

[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.

[ladyscarred]

I put this in a tab then completely forgot it.

1. This was fine for me. Even if I never got a chance to use it because my character.

2. Unsure... Powers make it easier to bs and pin it on a scapegoat. But it also makes issues for characters like Scarred, where the powers are too flexible. Which was why I didn't blue truth, because another character pointed out that Scarred would have potentially given magic an insta-win.

Also I'm probably bringing a character with dumb power to the main round

3. I liked it. But I'm biased because noon est is as I leave work. 6pm est is 10pm for me and by that time I'm dead.

4. I think the investigation needs more time as well if characters can't check things properly during the trials.