Neb on 14/5/2016 at 15:17

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We should also get a TTLG game of (http://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing) Neptune's Pride together. I've never played it, but I was at another forum where everyone had a game and it included a tonne of anonymous backstabbing. It's one of those free browser board games where you log in once a day while you're trying desperately to avoid work.

Neb on 14/5/2016 at 16:32

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I'll make a thread next week to see who is interested when all of my work is out the way.

Not that I'd be any good either, but it should be good fun.

Tony_Tarantula on 14/5/2016 at 18:37

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I'll second the ship. It does, by far, a better job of it than any other game on the market. Also don't forget playing as a TF2 spy.

Also a lot of strategy games lend themselves to deceptive play. It was more or less my signature style back when Command and Conquer was a thing. I'd send in a swam towards the front gates to distract another player's attention while using stealth units to wire their entire base. You'd be surprised how often it was effective.

Nameless Voice on 14/5/2016 at 20:08

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I sketched down a quick concept for a game about deception.
This one seems like it's even less likely to be made than my other game ideas, so I'll post it here:

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A small colony on a remote planet has been attacked by a swarm of aliens, causing major damage to the settlement and killing most of the colonists.

A few scattered survivors try to band together to save themselves, but are they really all working together as they appear, or do some of them have other agendas?

This is a multiplayer game, where each player controls one character. The players are assigned different classes semi-randomly, some of which have different goals and victory conditions than the others. While most of the players are working together for a common goal, others have to use deception and subtlety to appear to be helping their supposed allies, while really working on their own agenda.

The swarm:
Generic alien creatures, limited to close-quarters combat, generally fairly slow and weak, but wander the map in large numbers and can be very dangerous in small spaces.

Standard human character classes:
The human survivors want to either clear the alien infestation, repair the communication array and call for reinforcements (and survive until they arrive), or to repair a spacecraft and escape back to Earth.
Different players within the group may want to pursue different victory goals, potentially interfering with each other or at least not acting as efficiently as they might otherwise.

Soldier: A soldier, has powerful weapons, good at combat and physical activities, not that good at tech stuff.

Engineer: Good at building and repairing machinery and gadgets, worse weapons, physically weaker.

Medic-scientist: A medic, good at healing allies and doing medical-related tasks (such as building and using tools to detect imposters.) Limited weaponry.

Antagonist classes:
Alien shapeshifter:
A powerful alien, strong at close combat. Capable of freely shapeshifting into a human. A player who is selected as the shapeshifter gets to pick which of the human classes their human-form will be at the start of the game. When in human form, they appear to be that class to all outsiders.
Can see nearby humans through walls and has a limited control over nearby swarm creatures. Also gains devastating combat abilities when in alien form, but they are disabled when human.
The alien's goal is to either eliminate all the other survivors, or to remain undetected and sneak aboard their escape vessel to reach Earth.

Company Man / Bounty Hunter:
The company man knew about the aliens before they attacked. His goal is to capture one alive for study, and bring it back to the company. The company man can be any of the other human classes, with some extra bonuses allowing him to build traps and mechanisms to catch the alien. Since he needs to capture the alien and escape with it in order to win, he has the motivation to sabotage the other survivor's exploits. He doesn't want them to find and kill the alien, and he also wants to steer them towards escaping the planet with his precious cargo, rather than calling in the fleet.
The alien needs to be badly injured before it can be trapped, so the company man will need to work with the others to do so, but potentially betray them at the end to stop them killing it, either by disabling or killing them.


Gameplay
At the start of the game, a call has gone out for all remaining survivors to meet at the command centre in the middle of the colony. Each of the players starts off alone in a small saferoom nearby, and is expected to try to fight their way there through a light number of swarmers.
The normal thing would be for all the players to gather at the start, but they don't have to; they could choose to forge off alone or make smaller alliances. Starting separately also allows the antagonist players to play with their abilities a little before they join the rest of the team and are forced to hide them.

The command centre building is (relatively) safe - it has a few entrances that can make effective chokepoints, which start with (fairly weak) automated defences. However, most of the equipment there is broken, and will need to be repaired to be used.
The survivors can both repair and upgrade existing equipment, and construct new equipment, but they need materials and parts to do so, which are scattered around the world and often dangerous to reach.
The communication array and spaceport are two other important areas. The communication array is very badly damaged, and first needs the construction/repair of various other devices before it can be repaired or used. The space ship is equally damaged, and also needs a variety of parts to repair, plus fuel.
Survivors need to balance their current needs (ammunition, automatic defences, armour, weapons, survival) with gathering materials for their longer-term goals.
There are also some speciality pieces of equipment that can be constructed, such as a gene scanner (which will reveal the presence of the alien, but needs a lot of parts.)
Equipment can also be sabotaged or destroyed by players. Antagonists probably don't want the survivors learning who the alien is. Destroyed equipment will need to be rebuilt again with more parts; sabotaged equipment may pretend to work but not actually do so (or provide false results!); an engineer would be needed to detect the tampering.

The alien has limited control of the swarm and can use it to create distractions, to draw players to defend an area and allow them to operate somewhere else. The swarm can also be used deceptively - have it attack a pair of players, kill one, and leave the other alive so that the other players immediately suspect that player is the alien.
When a player is reduced to no health by the swarm, they are knocked down and can be rescued by other players, though the swarm will continue to attack them, and can kill them permanently in that state (though the swarm will tend to prefer standing players over disabled ones.)
The swarm will normally attack the alien up to the point of disablement, but will never kill him (since they are really allies.) An alien disabled by the swarm is also free to stand up on their own at any time (though that will blow their cover if it's seen.)

The number of each type of player is randomised. There might be one alien and one company man, or there might be three aliens and no company man, or five company men and one alien, or none of either (and the game just plays on the players' paranoia.) Having a company man and no alien would make no sense, though.


Dead players rejoin the game as observers, able to see everything which is happening but are (of course) unable to communicate with the other players.

Malf on 15/5/2016 at 07:50

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Chaos has a LOT of deception in it; it's based around opposing wizard casting spells, a lot of which summon creatures. You can only cast each of your spells once, except for the Disbelieve spell. The difficulty of casting a spell depends on the current alignment of the game; the more lawful spells that have been cast, the easier it is to cast lawful spells, the more chaotic spells have been cast, the harder it is to cast lawful spells and vice versa.
To that end, instead of casting the real thing, you could cast an illusory version which is guaranteed to succeed and does exactly the same damage as the real one, but is easily dismissed by an opposing wizard using the Disbelieve spell. It sounds simplistic, but quickly escalates into a game of second-guessing.

(http://www.chaos-reborn.com/) Chaos Reborn is the modern version.