Talk:The Council: Elsinore

Playtesting notes

Putting these here for permanent reference rather dumping them on the Slack channel:

Things that came up which need to be clarified in the ruleset:-

1. Can the Outsider veto after all votes have been cast? (Probably: yes.)
2. Should the Outsider have to justify a veto? (Probably: no.)
3. Online, if a proposal is seconded and it's clear what the wording was, can anyone (Outsider included) put that up for voting? (Probably: yes.)
4. Should change "change the elimination status of uneliminated" to just "eliminate" in the unvetoable rule, as this is redundant and possibly exploitable.
5. Do we need a word for "Council who aren't Rebels"? It's easy for some themes ("the Crew who aren't Robots are called Humans"; obvious that a Human cannot also be a Robot) but tricky for others ("the Cultists who aren't Investigators are... Loyal Cultists"; the Investigators have joined the Cult and are doing Cult things, so they are Cultists). Where it does get tricky, there's scope for scam proposals from either side, where players forget that "Cultist" means "any player" rather than "Loyal Cultist".
6. The Outsider clarifying a rule should be loud and unambiguous: everyone should know it has happened, and that it wasn't just the Outsider giving their take on something.
7. When the Outsider clarifies something which would only modify secretly-held information (eg. if they'd realised the dead-candidate loophole in Elsinore's voting system and silently processed the results with that in mind), they should state that it has been clarified, they can't choose to conceal that.
8. Should we say that eliminated Councillors no longer exist as Councillors for the purpose of any rules, except for rules which specifically refer to eliminated Councillors? (Probably: yes.)

Issues to resolve:-

1. If the Council reason that they can 100% trust someone and have a proposal slot available, they win. Resolutions could be (a) this is fine, just make sure everyone knows it, (b) limit actual kills to one per proposal to add some danger in that the trusted player could suffer a Night kill or the penultimate kill proposal could leave a 1-vs-1 Rebel win (and still make sure everyone knows about the power of multi-kills so that the Outsider can watch out for clever players trying to propose them mechanically).
2. Should players be allowed to take informal votes? This didn't come up, but I realised that the turn-taking proposal system gives the Council some incentive to do that, if they don't want the turn sequence to move on: instead of proposing a particular rule or kill, having an informal show of hands and not actually proposing it if it would fail. Possible fixes: (a) allow the Outsider to police at whim anything where more than half the players explicitly reject a proposal-shaped idea ("that was a vote, turn order moves on!"), or (b) say that a failed proposal doesn't move the turn on.
3. After the unfortunate coincidence last game, should online status be considered the same as making noises in Werewolf, in that players should politely agree to ignore it, so that we don't start stalking each other for online times and possible backchannels (and the Outsider doesn't start messing with us by pinging non-Rebels with fake questions, to wake them up).
4. Do we need to worry about proposals along the lines of "I propose that the non-Rebel Council members all win immediately, and the Outsider does too!", or would the Outsider veto that in character, and/or for being boring?

Big questions:-

1. Feels like the spirit of the game for "resolving ambiguity" should be that:
   1. If all Council and the Outsider all agree that a rule is not ambiguous, then it is not ambiguous;
   2. If all Council (including Rebels speaking privately to the Outsider) agree that a rule is not ambiguous and the Outsider disagrees, then the rule is not ambiguous, the Outsider cannot claim it to be otherwise;
   3. If all Council claim publicly that a rule is not ambiguous but a Rebel privately disagrees, then it is ambiguous and the Outsider may resolve it.
   4. If any Council says publicly that a rule is ambiguous, then it is ambiguous and the Outsider may resolve it.

   There's an exploit there in that the Outsider team can make a bad faith argument of "Eliminate Mallory, you say? That's ambiguous, do you maybe mean Alice?" by having the Rebels pretend to find it ambiguous. Resolution is maybe just a strong "don't do this" when setting up the Outsider's role (like the "yes obviously you can cheat your location but you're Dracula, you don't need to do that" in Fury of Dracula).

2. If the Outsider notices an ambiguity, are they expected to point it out and fix it at their earliest opportunity (in their capacity as game moderator keeping the game running smoothly), or to keep the players in the dark until the last, worst possible moment (in their capacity as antagonist)?
3. Is three proposals a day too slow a game, given how much discussion and intrigue two proposals had generated there? Would two proposals, or three with one of them having to be physical, sharpen the game up?

Will discuss on Slack. --Kevan (talk) 09:58, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Changes for next game

Clarifications of the issues listed above all seem resolvable as follows, I think:-

• Yes, the Outsider can wait for all votes to come in before vetoing.
• No, the Outsider doesn't have to justify any given veto.
• Yes, once a clear wording of a proposal has been seconded, anyone can post it (and the Outsider probably should, in their capacity as game host).
• Yes, "change the elimination status of uneliminated" should just be "eliminate".
• The players should usually try to find a clear term for "non-Rebel Council", which will never be confused for the "Council" term. But if they can't think of a good one (eg. "we're all Bank Robbers, but two of us are Undercover Cops and the rest of us are Criminals" - there's scope for getting Bank Robbers and Criminals mixed up, or deliberately scammed), they should proceed without.
• Yes, the Outsider should be encouraged to be very clear when they are making a ruling.
• Yes, rulings should be declared even if they only affect secret information.
• Yes, eliminated Councillors should default to not counting as Councillors for the sake of rules and proposals, unless that rule or proposal specifically refers to "eliminated Councillors".

Issues to resolve:

• Council winning as soon as they can 100% trust someone feels too unintuitive, against a backdrop of Werewolf where that level of trust would be a hugely two-edged sword. I'm very tempted to try a game with a constraint of "no more than 1 kill per proposal" (ie. if a proposal includes more than one kill, it stops being an unvetoable physical proposal; the Outsider can veto it) to see how it plays out.
• "Should players be allowed to take informal votes?" needs discussion.
• Backchannel stalking needs more discussion.
• Whether the rules need a patch for "I propose that the non-Rebel Council members all win immediately, and the Outsider does too!" needs more discussion.

Big questions:

• I think we're okay with the clarification that if the Outsider team agree that something is ambiguous, it's ambiguous. But that they're expected to make that call fairly. Given that this call is public and there will be instant bad blood if the Outsider tries some annoying "you proposed gaining 10 gold, but you didn't specify what base that number was in! Ambiguity! I rule base 2!" stunt, I think that's okay.
• Is the Outsider expected to comment on ambiguities when they notice them, or can they leave them open if that suits them? Needs discussion.
• Should we try a game with 2 proposals per day, or 2 proposals plus 1 physical? Needs discussion.

One new question:

• Should the game open with a free scene-setting proposal from the Outsider, possibly drawing from a library of basic, unthemed Council objects (eg. "Ward: A player holding this object cannot be eliminated.")?

Will ping Slack again. --Kevan (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2020 (UTC)