I'll be going over what we currently have at the moment regarding the murder mechanics as well as potentially echoing (giving a +1) to the above statements as necessary and inputting my own thoughts, so please bear with me here.
Current murder mechanics:
First of all, I do think that characters suffering the pain of the victim is completely fine, but losing memories is kind of a mixed bag for me, for two reasons. The first being that memory loss can't be entirely pinned down to murder ICly--a lot of the cast can't exactly remember a lot of the things prior to game start (i.e: getting multiple tallies, gaps in their memories, etc) and we also have a memory loss mechanic for losing tallies as well. The second reason why it's a mixed bag is that it's very much "your measurement may vary" as a punishment; if someone finds out that they can lose memories by doing a murder, it could potentially encourage a character to murder more, even if they may not be able to ICly choose what memories get erased, so it can wind up being more of an incentive than a proper deterrent in specific cases.
I firmly believe that if there's going to be an additional punishment outside of feeling the victims' pain that perhaps instead of there being some "overall generic consequence" that instead, if they're caught, they could get something a little more personalized? Naturally, this would be something discussed with the culprit beforehand. Generic ones such as detention and school suspension are things that I do think could work, but something more specific for the killer would also be good. I'll bring this up a little more below, too, when I recap some of the comments above.
Other murder mechanics outside of the ones listed in the post: - I do like having the amount of clues listed out, as well as locations; primarily so that things aren't missed (or that people aren't like bumbling around in random locations that just don't... have anything) although alternatively, this can also be amended with stating outright on the post that all the clues have been found in X location on the post if you want to allow more freedom in terms of searching things. But knowing that we have found all the clues needed to solve is always good. I can't speak much on whether anything else needs to be changed right now, given that the current case is still up in the air and unsolved, so I'll put a pin on this and get back to you on that later.
Scapegoat and general "getting away with it" mechanics:
I think this is a good idea for opt-in. However, if a system regarding "capturing a culprit" is put in place, especially if a culprit needs to be rewarded for not getting caught, I think there needs to be a set amount of time that the case needs to be solved ICly in order for a character to pass/fail so that they can be rewarded or punished as needed.
This does not mean that characters need to necessarily 'stop trying to solve the case', it just means that characters trying to solve the case won't get a reward from the school itself for solving it, and solving the case would become more of a personal justice type of thing.
Also, this might help with the whole "timecube" thing where we just end up having meetings every month for like, a single case spanning over a couple of months (see: the current case lasting from basically December all the way up to February and might even go into March depending on whether it is solved or not).
Other general murder-related things:
For rewards regarding capturing the killer, while merit points are nice, hypothetically, we haven't really seen them used much outside of bonus AC - which not everyone is able to do, given that Yogen is a higher AC game than the average nowadays - or even the auction. While it's true that merit points may be things that can lead up to graduation, I feel like they need to have more of an impact now for them to have any meaning. Of course, that's probably difficult to do given that merit points aren't exactly counted ICly; otherwise I would have suggested something like "game impact depending on how much overall merit points the school has" (although I suppose this can be used in general? just throwing spaghetti at the wall) or having impact in general events--like if a character is in ~this certain threshold, merit points-wise~ this happens and such, something similar to to the tallies threshold, or something like that. Merit points just in general need to hold some more weight outside of 'you need them to potentially graduate' in game, imo.
Also, I'm going to generally +1 on the whole concept of characters getting a reduced bonus AC item as a potential option for an IC reward. I do also like the idea that was brought up on plurk about having a celebratory party for solving it--given that the characters are stuck in the school, giving them access to food that's more difficult to cook or make using ingredients provided in the school itself is generally nice; obviously, this can be in addition to other rewards, given that a party may not be as good of a motivator re: solving the crime.
And as for why mechanics are being changed, I do agree with the above: using the new school year - especially now that the principal, vice principal and former student body president are dead - would cause the school to change things. Not to mention that we do know, ICly, that tuition is tied to karma, so why not have murder mechanics also be potentially tied to karma as well? Now, I'm not saying that we necessarily need motives to murder that are explicitly tied to karma--just that karma in general can be tied with how things are changing within the school and perhaps can affect things besides murder depending on where we're at.
And honestly, I'm going to say it here first: having no murder at all on certain months can also tie back to karma and affect the game or even just having a no murder streak, etc. I'm not saying "no more murders ICly" but rather "hey, maybe we need to see benefits for not doing a murder at all, too."
That's all I can think of at the current moment, although if anything else crops up or I can think of something, I'll update.
no subject
First of all, I do think that characters suffering the pain of the victim is completely fine, but losing memories is kind of a mixed bag for me, for two reasons. The first being that memory loss can't be entirely pinned down to murder ICly--a lot of the cast can't exactly remember a lot of the things prior to game start (i.e: getting multiple tallies, gaps in their memories, etc) and we also have a memory loss mechanic for losing tallies as well. The second reason why it's a mixed bag is that it's very much "your measurement may vary" as a punishment; if someone finds out that they can lose memories by doing a murder, it could potentially encourage a character to murder more, even if they may not be able to ICly choose what memories get erased, so it can wind up being more of an incentive than a proper deterrent in specific cases.
I firmly believe that if there's going to be an additional punishment outside of feeling the victims' pain that perhaps instead of there being some "overall generic consequence" that instead, if they're caught, they could get something a little more personalized? Naturally, this would be something discussed with the culprit beforehand. Generic ones such as detention and school suspension are things that I do think could work, but something more specific for the killer would also be good. I'll bring this up a little more below, too, when I recap some of the comments above.
Other murder mechanics outside of the ones listed in the post:
- I do like having the amount of clues listed out, as well as locations; primarily so that things aren't missed (or that people aren't like bumbling around in random locations that just don't... have anything) although alternatively, this can also be amended with stating outright on the post that all the clues have been found in X location on the post if you want to allow more freedom in terms of searching things. But knowing that we have found all the clues needed to solve is always good. I can't speak much on whether anything else needs to be changed right now, given that the current case is still up in the air and unsolved, so I'll put a pin on this and get back to you on that later.
I think this is a good idea for opt-in. However, if a system regarding "capturing a culprit" is put in place, especially if a culprit needs to be rewarded for not getting caught, I think there needs to be a set amount of time that the case needs to be solved ICly in order for a character to pass/fail so that they can be rewarded or punished as needed.
This does not mean that characters need to necessarily 'stop trying to solve the case', it just means that characters trying to solve the case won't get a reward from the school itself for solving it, and solving the case would become more of a personal justice type of thing.
Also, this might help with the whole "timecube" thing where we just end up having meetings every month for like, a single case spanning over a couple of months (see: the current case lasting from basically December all the way up to February and might even go into March depending on whether it is solved or not).
For rewards regarding capturing the killer, while merit points are nice, hypothetically, we haven't really seen them used much outside of bonus AC - which not everyone is able to do, given that Yogen is a higher AC game than the average nowadays - or even the auction. While it's true that merit points may be things that can lead up to graduation, I feel like they need to have more of an impact now for them to have any meaning. Of course, that's probably difficult to do given that merit points aren't exactly counted ICly; otherwise I would have suggested something like "game impact depending on how much overall merit points the school has" (although I suppose this can be used in general? just throwing spaghetti at the wall) or having impact in general events--like if a character is in ~this certain threshold, merit points-wise~ this happens and such, something similar to to the tallies threshold, or something like that. Merit points just in general need to hold some more weight outside of 'you need them to potentially graduate' in game, imo.
Also, I'm going to generally +1 on the whole concept of characters getting a reduced bonus AC item as a potential option for an IC reward. I do also like the idea that was brought up on plurk about having a celebratory party for solving it--given that the characters are stuck in the school, giving them access to food that's more difficult to cook or make using ingredients provided in the school itself is generally nice; obviously, this can be in addition to other rewards, given that a party may not be as good of a motivator re: solving the crime.
And as for why mechanics are being changed, I do agree with the above: using the new school year - especially now that the principal, vice principal and former student body president are dead - would cause the school to change things. Not to mention that we do know, ICly, that tuition is tied to karma, so why not have murder mechanics also be potentially tied to karma as well? Now, I'm not saying that we necessarily need motives to murder that are explicitly tied to karma--just that karma in general can be tied with how things are changing within the school and perhaps can affect things besides murder depending on where we're at.
And honestly, I'm going to say it here first: having no murder at all on certain months can also tie back to karma and affect the game or even just having a no murder streak, etc. I'm not saying "no more murders ICly" but rather "hey, maybe we need to see benefits for not doing a murder at all, too."
That's all I can think of at the current moment, although if anything else crops up or I can think of something, I'll update.