Gobi ([info]gobi) wrote,
@ 2006-01-15 11:07:00
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John Carpenter's The Thing: The Party Game

Premise
A hostile alien entity has been discovered in a remote archeological outpost. This entity can take the shape of anyone. Who do you trust? Are your senses deceiving you?

Setup
This is a party game meant for a room full of a lot of people, somewhere around 10-25 people is ideal. More than that, and things get kind of chaotic. Fewer than that, and the game is too short.

Choose a person to be the Game Master. By drawing cards out of a hat, choose some people to be Soldiers. Choose others to be Archeologists. The Soldiers and Archeologists should be in equal number. Everyone else is a Local. One person among all of these players is secretly The Thing.

The soldiers, archeologists and locals have some special features that distinguish themselves from one another.

Locals: Get one vote and one Trust token.
Soldiers: Get two votes and no Trust tokens.
Archeologists: Get no votes and two Trust tokens.

Play
Step 1: The Thing
The GM tells everyone to close their eyes. The GM tells the Thing to wake up. The Thing walks around the room and chooses a victim by tapping him or her on the shoulder. The Thing is now out of the game. The victim keeps his eyes closed, but becomes the Thing in the next round.

Step 2: Voting
GM tells everyone to open their eyes. Everyone votes for who they think is the Thing. The person with the most votes is out of the game unless someone spends Trust tokens.

Step 3: Trust
Other people can spend Trust tokens on your behalf to cancel out votes. One token cancels one vote. Once Trust tokens are spent, they cannot be used again for the rest of the game. If as a result of token-spending there are zero votes, continue from Step 1.

Victory
If there are two people left in the game, the Thing wins. If the Thing is voted out of the game, everyone else wins.



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[info]locke61dv
2006-01-18 07:21 am UTC (link)
Interesting. Questions to clarify (and note that I've not seen the original movie).

* What interest does someone tapped as "the Thing" have to not admit they're The Thing and save the town? Do they then win only if The Thing kills everybody?

* Note that in Mafia one thing you have going on is that you have increasing information over time, even if you're slowly being killed off by the Mafia. Is there increasing information going on here?

* When you spend your trust to cancel out a vote, does that mean that this person can't be threatened with a vote again in this round? (Because otherwise it's too easy to use up that Trust when it's not going to be a "real" vote.)

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[info]gobi
2006-01-18 12:53 pm UTC (link)
1. Yeah, I figure the Thing's only goal is to infect and kill everybody.

2. Hmm... I guess not really? Because there's only one "mafia" and he keeps changing every round.

3. Ooooh.... So perhaps Trust tokens should instead work like Immunity in Survivor... interesting.

One of the big things that others have noted is the lack of a "testing" mechanic in the game. The movie made a big deal about drawing blood samples from people on a regular basis to make sure they weren't the Thing. I still haven't worked out how to do that just yet.

Some other peoples' suggestions:

* Most recently made Thing gets to convert one innocent at night. Old thing stays a Thing, but loses ability to spread.

* Voting: Anyone who gets more votes than trust tokens is "tested". Ergo, multiple people can/will be tested each night as the votes will be split. Testing a Thing removes them from the game. Testing a human causes those voting to test them to lose their trust tokens, or maybe not.

* Anyone can spend a Trust token to show their support of someone under suspicion (allowing alliances). If The Thing is found, the game ends early. If someone is tested and found innocent, they gain an extra Trust token (essentially keeping the balance because a token still changes hands).

* Have archeologists regenerate one Trust token so that they don't become mechanically neutral after spending all of them.

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