Well, considering that it have been 25 years since the last Nonary Game, so I would say..... 2040, if my math is right.

Nnngh I will edit it to say The NEW New York Herald.

(Seriously I don't know American Newspapers gimme a break).

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I didn't want to use the name of a real newspaper, so I got that one from modern day Game of Thrones House of Cards. I had no idea it was an actual newspaper at one point.

Added a special QT to the first post since their game has now finished.

JM I'm just waiting to hear back from you about your ending before I drop your QT in here.

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Sorry! Didn't realize you posted again in the qt after you asked me what I wanted my ending to be

The ending is more than to my expectation

Well then with the addition of Bishop's ending and QT to the first post I can official declare this done and dusted!

This was a pretty difficult thing to plan, I had no idea how some of the new systems would work out and indeed some things did only come out in practice. I had debated making the shock level maximum of 5, and I struggled to think of some interesting items to include in the game. When I went in I'll admit I had more ambitions than plans. I had 18 people waiting to start and I was afraid that if I dallied too long someone would disappear or lose interest and then I'd be left with no game at all. So some of it had to be worked out in transit and put through testing to see how it would work.

If I had taken more time I would have attempted to plan out a better mystery but I was quite happy with how things turned out. Despite the addition of actual "ACTIONS" I'd actually planned for this game to allow more creativity and fluidity with the character's actions. Making the game less mechanised and more freeform roleplay. It's why certain items (Vii's hacking device) came with the suggestion that he could try using it for things other than it's stated purpose. Likewise Penta had enhanced strength and stamina and would be capable of using this in a variety of ways (such as breaking Laurent's handcuffs was one idea they considered).

I suppose that this was a success in the incident involving the handcuffs in the other game. It was about as freeform as I could have hoped for and I'm very pleased with how that turned out.

I'm always open to suggestions and constructive criticism for this game. I'd built this one right now upon the previous premises that the games should be part mystery in addition to their games and that roleplay element added something decidedly unique to it and so any further ways to refine this game are welcome.


Other challenges:
-Phase Changes take forever when I effectively need to calculate two game's worth of them and had added so many mechanics for everyone to do
-It's weirdly difficult to find sets of headshot sprites for things. Ultimately I had to make the Sans set myself.
-Themes and designing puzzles around them. Granted I pulled most of the final ones from the internet but overall it was quite challenging constructing a new theme. Plus scaling puzzles to people, seemed that even the hardest of logic puzzles cracked at the end so the shock mechanic wasn't quite as I'd hoped. The level 3 shock was actually a post-planning change to make it somewhat of a threat. The Endgame was also tuned because of this.
-Tracking so many names is exhausting.

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Would you (or JM or Franz) have any advice for eager new GM's wanting to run their own Nonary Game for the first time? What kinds of things should we be wary of? What didn't go like you expected?

I don't think I said this before, so thank you for organising all this, Pierre! It was a lot of fun.

A criticism I have is that there was a lot of different stuff going on that people could do, but most of it didn't go anywhere. I'm not sure if the actions got a huge amount of use, shocks like you said had less of an impact than expected and mercy votes didn't mean too much either. It also felt like there wasn't as much of an opportunity as expected to do crazy things like killing people, but then, the G-F game sure didn't seem to have that problem XD With the ability to always watch your back, it became difficult to see when you could ever try anything.

There was also little motive for betraying people, beyond doing so to achieve one of your goals like Queen did. The punishment system was such that you didn't need to go out of your way to try and escape at other people's expense. Again, however, that didn't turn out to be a problem in the G-F game. Our game might have just been missing a catalyst to set people off doing more extreme things.

I do want to commend you for the mystery and roleplaying elements, though. They made it so much better.

I think my biggest problem with the game overall was the pacing. I know you had to deal with two games/work but I definitely frequently forgot to send my actions just because I'd kind of forget about the game when so many days went by without much happening. I don't know if you did this, but I always wrote the scripts of events a few rounds in advance so I could just copy and paste from a document and then change some things around (like the members of each group) to streamline things

But overall I did really like it. I thought there were too many mechanics as well but I did like the safe/puzzle system and it was definitely better than the typical "first come, first served." Admittedly, I thought the mystery was a bit cliché at the beginning (maybe because my character didn't know anything about anything) but I ended up being impressed at the end at by how deep it was

I also really liked each of the individual endings, they leave a lot of threads to follow up on

I did think my character felt a little too irrelevant (connected to the last game but that wasn't even known as a thing in this game until the end) but I guess Franzise probably felt the same last time so eh

What was the luminol supposed to be for?

I'd say overall just come up with the story first and foremost as it's kind of easy to build the mechanics for the death game. To write the story, go one character at a time (starting with the "main character" or Zero, but you can really go from wherever) and the story will kind of build itself. Make sure too many characters don't know who each other are as simple conversation could end up cracking the mystery

That's all I can get off the top of my head but I'll answer more specific questions if you have any

I think the luminol was to be used in the event if the knife was used to kill somebody in the game.

Or any situation where blood got spilled.

As for your character JM...I'm sorry. Initially I didn't want to have to put in a call back character or a previous connection. I knew I wouldn't have full control of the setting or story if I had to shoehorn some folks in for traditions sake. You'd told me before not to put in filler characters and I really apologise but you ended up getting what I considered a filler character.


Not that you didn't make yourself relevant to the story, but you weren't tied to any of the real "factions" as such. The backstory was still thought out but ultimately your thing with the Calderwoods was a red herring. To make you feel you had something to go on.

Yeah I guess I regret not giving you a better tie in but like I said before I felt I was a bit limited in time to prepare.

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For what it's worth I felt like Bishop was pretty relevant to the game if not the overall story

I didn't feel like I knew much about what was going on but fortunately the stuff I did know was exactly what I needed to know to win



don't feed the players false information and try to be cute about revealing it might not be right or jumpfight will blow everyone up

don't start the game without knowing how you want rooms and such set up so you end up giving half-assed descriptions at the last minute

don't end the game and then go into hiding for a week without posting the ending because you're too nervous about everyone flaying you over how badly your game went

really just read the second game and do the exact opposite of everything I did

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I suppose I'll also apologize because I didn't mean to pressure you into tying these games to the last one (which you did well at with the end anyway). I do appreciate the intention anyway

It's really not a big deal so you don't have to apologize, I was just mildly disappointed that I could never really contribute anything beyond my own educated hypotheses because I didn't have any pertinent information. I still felt as if I could help out enough at least

Edit: Additionally, if anybody looking here is interested in another game: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=31878