An idea for a live (Discord) gameboard, "Nonstop Ambidexterity"

So since I’m really digging the concept of forbidden actions in Danganronpa 3 Future side, I ended up wondering if it isn’t possible to design a gameboard around that. I went through a few ideas in my head last night and I’d like your help in potentially making a playable version (or scrapping the idea because it’s not feasible or fun or whatever). For the time being, here’s the basic, unrefined concept.

The game would take place live on Discord. There would have to be game masters, preferably two, and an even number of players; one half being the “Hope” team and the other the “Despair” team. The objective of the game is to find out who belongs on what team, establish communication channels with your own teammates and block communications of your enemies.

The game has two phases: Nonstop Debates and Intermissions. During Nonstop Debates, the players all chat with each other in either a voice or a text channel (voice channel would be hell to manage, unfortunately). The catch is that everyone has a “forbidden action” they must not perform during the Nonstop Debate. These can include things like ‘not posting in one minute’ or ‘sending a message that does not address another player specifically by name’.

During every Nonstop Debate every player can also perform one of two actions: Ally or Betray. You can do exactly one action per Nonstop Debate, targeting a specific player, and they are only resolved when the debate phase ends - I’d say after 2-5 minutes - and the game moves on to the Intermission phase.

During Intermission, the main text channel may not be used. There are two important things that happen during this phase: Actions are resolved and Forbidden Actions are redistributed. Let’s start with the latter: the number of forbidden actions in the game is equal to the number of players, so they have to be redistributed. However they are not redistributed at random. In fact, they are redistributed in a pattern that alternates between the two teams every Nonstop Debate. So if you just had a forbidden action you can be sure that the person who has that forbidden action in the next debate is on the opposing team; and on the debate after that it hits one of your teammates. likewise if you realize in hindsight that somebody else had that forbidden action just before you, you can be sure they are on the opposing team.

There’s two more important details to note regarding forbidden actions. First, if you break your forbidden action, a moderator will post in the channel publicly that you’ve violated your forbidden action. You’re banned from speaking in the main text channel until the Nonstop Debate ends and your actions are cancelled. The second is that if you’ve had a forbidden action once, you must break it at least once in all subsequent Nonstop Debates. Meaning if you get the forbidden action to ‘post a message without bracket symbols () in it’, you have to post at least one message that has no bracket symbols in them. If you fail to do that, your action of that round will be cancelled.

Now about actions, as I said there are two possibilities: Ally with someone or Betray someone. If you choose to ally with someone it initially does nothing (the other person is not informed that you want to ally with them), but if the person you ally with also chooses to ally with you, you may from that point on talk to them via direct messaging without any restrictions, be it during Nonstop Debates or Intermissions. Ally actions do not run out, so even if someone chooses to ally you in the first debate and you return that ally in the fourth debate, it still goes through. If you choose to Betray someone, however, their action for this turn is cancelled. Any Ally or Betray they might have done will not happen, but they will be informed of the fact that you are the one who blocked them. If there is a cycle of Betray actions, everyone is informed of who betrayed them. Also, if a player Betrays another, they can never betray that player ever again or be betrayed by them ever again. It’s a one time one way chance.

The ultimate goal of the game is to have an entire team post a certain message in single words in succession without being interrupted by any other message inbetween. Like, say, Team Hope consists of four players and their message to write is “HOPE WILL ALWAYS WIN”. That means in order to win, the four team members must write “HOPE”, “WILL”, “ALWAYS” and “WIN” in succession, every word by a different team member, without any member of Team Despair writing a message inbetween. If they fail and a member of Team Despair does manage to squeeze a message in… I’m not sure, should Team Despair instantly win or should the attempt just fail and Team Hope can try again in the next Nonstop Debate? Well either way works I guess.

Either way, of course that victory can only be brought about by communicating with your teammates over direct messages, so using Ally correctly is essentially mandatory. Which is also why it’s important to block your enemies with Betray so they take longer than you to set up a net of Ally channels. But the more pressing issue is figuring out who is your ally and who is your enemy, and that’s where the forbidden actions come in. Since every forbidden action alternates between teams every Nonstop Debate, if you can figure out who has a forbidden action you’ve seen before you know their alignment. You can press other players, trying to force them to violate their forbidden actions or give away their alignment. Maybe you can even strategically violate a forbidden action to show allies that already had that forbidden action that you are, indeed, their ally; though be prepared to be potentially hit by a wave of Betray actions from enemies that had that forbidden action as well!

What do you think? Sound like it could be fun? To me I suppose the biggest problem would be moderating the whole thing, since you have a lot to keep track of - every player’s forbidden action, whether they violated it or not, every player’s FORMER forbidden actions and whether they actually violated them that round… Which is why I’d say depending on the number of players you need one moderator per team. And which is why the Intermissions are impossible to remove since you need time to look back over your notes and evaluate all actions. There are a couple more problems, like what would the players even talk about during the first Nonstop Debate when nobody has any idea of anybody else’s forbidden actions yet? Should they maybe be told the forbidden action of one of their allies or enemies? I guess that’d give them something to work towards. How strict should the actions be? Something as silly as ‘send a message that doesn’t have a Key character’s first name in it’ or something more simple?

I’d like to hear you guys’ thoughts.

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It sounds very interesting, but I agree that it would be too difficult to moderate. My suggestion, if you’re serious, is to find somebody with basic programming knowledge and ask them to code some simple software to keep track of all these variables and let the players input their actions into it for it to resolve.

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