- Every player is granted a "Future Diary", most of them in the form of a cellphone. These "predict" the future in different time spans that vary from diary to diary.
- With the power of the diaries, deduction and whatever else is in your head what you are meant to do is to defeat the rest of the diary holders. Different types of citizens can effectively use certain locations and weapons to their advantage.
- Jobs are linked to diaries. The Fourth Diary Holder will, for example, be the POLICE CHIEF, etc.
- The game takes place in a city, meaning everyone gets a general map. Only the areas they are meant to have good knowledge of are "unveiled". In this sense, someone with the occupation of stundent would have School, Library, etc as places with surroundings he has full knowledge of. Visiting other places reveals information but not as much information. A cop, for example, would have good information on the Police Station and its surroundings, and the city streets in general.
- They may choose to stick or not to stick to their routines. Daytime and public places are the safest places to be, as the police would soon attend the call in case any disturbance were to happen. Therefore, sticking to your normal life might prove to be the safest option, while you may choose to use daytime to gather information and even attempt to hit on other players at unexpected times.
- Some players start with OUTLAW status. This means that if a quarrel between players begins and the cops show up, those with OUTLAW status will be the main targets of the pursuit. Regular players that commit crimes will gain OUTLAW status as well. POLICE CHIEF is a player himself, and covers up names and some crimes, meaning the public in general is unaware of the OUTLAW status of the players. This also means OUTLAWS can go out in public.
- Some roles cannot skip some daily activities. The mayor needs to be in his office pretty frequently.
- If your diary is destroyed, YOU DIE. So you are not only looking after yourself, but also after your diary. Take care to not leave it lying around the place.
- Alternatively, if another participant renders you defenseless, he may take your diary and use its powers for himself. Diary Holders can operate without diaries, but they have a huge disadvantage in most cases, obviously. If the owner of a diary dies, the diary loses its powers.
- Players may text each other through their diaries. Equal to PMing, basically. They may form alliances or whatever the hell they want. There is no way other than intuition and deduction to find out WHICH is the diary whoever texts you possesses, however. Trusting someone that tells you "I'm the holder of [x] diary" is basically taking a shot in the dark.
- The rest works like a regular TKG, you send your actions to the host via PM including where you want to go, what you want to do, etc. The report you get after your actions have been sent would include the new diary predictions. The host would pretty much be the current Deus Ex Machina. The more I think about it, the more this sounds like some bad Mafia crossover :v. Travel distance and stuff would be decided once the map is done, I guess.
- Oh, also, the win conditions for some diary holders are different. You will see soon.
Some diaries were omitted and some had their names changed, etc, etc. Practical reasons.
One note on diaries, they present information ALSO based on the user's pool of knowledge. Therefore, if you care for someone not to die and your diary allows so, you can predict when someone else is in danger, as opposed to not knowing that person at all leading to not getting any info on it.
The time span between prediction and prediction is 1 turn or action, unless stated otherwise.
First Diary - NO DIFFERENCE DIARY - STUDENTIt predicts all sorts of events around the holder of the diary based on his intentions. For example, if the holder is currently in the hospital and he plans to take a walk to school, the diary would predict relevant events in the hospital, the way to the school and the school itself, all while the user is still in the hospital. The flaw to this diary is that nothing short of being shot will actually display information about yourself. It's one of the best diaries in terms of prevention, but it's not good in close encounters.
Second Diary - STALKER DIARY - STUDENTIt predicts and displays information based on the holder of the first diary. Finding the first diary holder is easy, as your own diary will display his location. After that, you must convince him of working together with you. You should do this quickly and be persuasive, or someone else could trick him into thinking he is the second diary holder. If the first and second diary holders work together, they are able to predict massive ammounts of accurate information covering for each other's weaknesses. If one of them is wasted though, this all goes down the drain.
In your obsession with the first diary holder, your primary objective is to keep him alive at all costs. If the first diary holder dies, you LOSE. If you eliminate all other diary holders and only you and the first are left, then your LOSE condition changes, you are allowed to kill the first in order to win the game. The first will also try and defend himself of course.
Third Diary - MURDER DIARY - SERIAL MURDERERThe owner must select a target in the viccinity. After that, his diary predicts the moves of his target. It's a good diary if you intend to take the offensive. The diary works as long as you can kill the target. If your target is beyond your ability to kill the diary loses track of its target.
Fourth Diary - INVESTIGATION DIARY - POLICE CHIEFThis diary has the ability to predict crimes all around the city. It provides locations and names, but again, no information on what diary the people responsible for the crimes hold. It's a good diary in terms of chasing and massive information collecting, but provides little information on one-on-one encounters, and none at all on people that have commited no crimes. This holder is always aware of murders and knows the reamining number of players.
Fifth Diary - SUPER VISION DIARY - STUDENTThis diary is NOT a cellphone. Once the owner is notified of the ownership of this diary, he may choose what his diary may be. As long as it displays text, it can be anything. You can be deceptive about it. Just make sure it is not something lame. Shirts can display text but they are not allowed
. Pick a book, a pc if you want it to be stationary, whatever.
This diary predicts only 3 times a day: Morning, noon and afternoon, and at any of these times it predicts the events of your current plans up to the next 3 times of prediction. For example, at morning, it predicts what is about to happen in the morning, noon and afternoon of that day. At noon, it will predict events based on the new situation for the noon, afternoon and morning of the next day. It predicts massive amounts of information about your surroundings, your plans and yourself (unlike the first diary), but only 3 times a day. This could also turn into an advantage, since you do not need to carry around your diary ALL the time to make predictions, but only 3 times a day or even less if you trust everything will go according to planned... That way you need to worry about someone abducting your diary but about yourself.
Sixth Diary - THOUSAND LEAGUE EYES DIARY - SHRINE ATTENDANT (I cannot turn you into shrine maidens okay)The followers of the holder of this diary act as eyes and ears of the diary. The diary will display events heard or seen by her followers, which might be the average citizen. In this sense, anything done in a place where someone else could have seen or heard you, will be reported back to the diary. The citizens, however, play no other role than that. Actions performed during the day will be inmediately reported to the sixth diary, and actions performed by night will be reported when shown in the news. This is the diary that recieves the largest amount of information, it tells you the status of pretty much the whole city. But it will not predict events "close" to you. It will work as long as there is a witness. This is one of the diaries that does NOT predict the future.
Seventh Diary - EXCHANGE DIARY - CIVILIANThis diary is composed by... Two diaries. The first diary predicts attacks before they occur, the second diary indicates the location of whoever the couple is chasing. Unlike the murder diary, it does not predict where your target runs to, but where your target currently is. Both diary holders must remain alive in order to win, meaning that if both survive, both win the game (unlike the First and Second diary holders alliance). The LOSE condition is still similar however; if any of the holders dies, the other holder also loses.
Seventh Diary Variation - LOVE LOVE DIARY - CIVILIAN (I would be amused to use this variation and see "lovers" together)
Same. Composed by two diaries, the same LOSE condition and same VICTORY conditions. The diaries show the immediate future of the other Seventh. This might be useful to split up and gather information: If one of the Seventh is about to run in trouble the other one can text him (or her?) about it, seeing how they can predict things about to happen to a short-mid term.
Eighth Diary - SERVER DIARY - CIVILIAN (If there were considerably more players than diaries, then I would implement this diary. Otherwise scrapped.)
Somewhat similar to the Sixth Diary. The owner of this diary has a certain amount of people he cooperates with. All of them have their own sub-diaries. These sub-diaries will record information seen or heard and will inform of the status of the holder of the diary and his location. They possess no other powers or predictive abilities. If a sub-diary is destroyed, the owner of the diary is NOT killed. In fact, the diary will be replaced by some other item on the player's inventory. This works as a hive-mind kind of organization. The holders of sub-diaries and the Eighth holder himself are normal civilians and are no good at handling weapons. They rely on numbers and information to catch their targets rather than predictive abilities. If the Eighth Diary is destroyed, the Eighth dies (duh) and all the sub-diary holders are OUT of the game. The Eighth Diary is a desktop computer, a static diary located in a normal house.
Ninth Diary - ESCAPE DIARY - TERRORISTThe best survival diary. It predicts the safest possible escape route. If escape is impossible, however, the diary loses its effectiveness. Good option for someone willing to become an OUTLAW early in the game, as it allows hit-and-run kind of gameplay, along with day time hits while still playing it safe. While the diary does predict what the safest escape route is, it does not describe the hazards you may encounter in your "safe" escape route or what might happen if you do not follow the path it tells you to. It will include elements relevant to your escape, such as "there is a motorcycle in x spot", and stuff of that kind.
Tenth Diary - REARING DIARYObliterated and omitted. This means I am looking for another type of diary. Ideas and suggestions are welcome D:
Eleventh Diary - WATCHER DIARY - DETECTIVEThis diary is pretty simple. It lets you spy on the diary of your choice. This means you can figure out who is who pretty quickly if you know who to spy on at what moment... And that is it. That is all this diary does. You still have your deductive powers and alliances to get stuff done, and you can read what your opponent is predicting on fights at any rate ;o.
Twelfth Diary - LUNACY DIARY - POLICE OFFICERThe one and only mindfuck diary. It allows you to distort the predictions of another diary for an entire set of actions. While the holder may not control what the other diary displays, the set of predictions in the target diary will bend to the advantage or the interest of the Twelfth. This works on one "variety" of diary at a time (If Seventh and Eighth Diaries are targeted for example, all involved diaries will be distorted).
As for the roles themselves, each has their specifications and some have even some special abilities.
- STUDENT - During the day, the STUDENT may decide to stick to what he should be doing and assist school, where he might be a later safer, or investigate like he should. Possesses no particular prowess on any kind of weapon and is unlikely to be the main target of a pursuit when cops show up. Also unlikely to acquire OUTLAW status. Attacking a STUDENT during the night, assuming he is home, would imply hurting the rest of his family members in certain ways and sets OUTLAW status immediately on whoever tried to attack at that time. STUDENT are most vulnerable on their way to school, unless they go out of their way to investigate or look for other diary holders at night (LIKE THEY SHOULD BE DOING >:l). STUDENT may spend most of their time in safe spots, but are in turn, more vulnerable to attacks. due to lack of proficiency in weapons. STUDENT players get to choose where they live in.
- CIVILIAN - Lives alone and has a poor, if not non-existent social life. May choose to skip work (heh) to go investigate. Work places might or might not be safe, but they sure are safer than the streets. Again, safety vs information and progressing in game. CIVILIANS have the strength of an average adult and have a bit of proficiency in all kinds of weapons. Using the same weapon for too long will increase success rate of hurting or killing your opponent -using guns improves your aim, using knives improves your chances of getting a hit in, or even setting traps improves the disguise of the traps. CIVILIANS may also disguise themselves, but they will appear suspicious to the police when dressed in dark clothes. CIVILIAN players get to choose the place they live in as well as the place they work in.
- SHRINE ATTENDANT - Lives surrounded by other shrine attendants in the remote location the shrine is in. The shrine is a public place but cops will have a hard time getting here. The THOUSAND LEAGUE EYES DIARY is not static however, and can be taken anywhere, so the diary holder is not trapped. All other players have little information about the shrine and its surroundings, so the SHRINE ATTENDANT may also choose to set traps around the place at night or at possible entry points. The shrine is large and has good hiding spots, but people are always around the place and it is hard to move in secrecy. The SHRINE ATTENDANT is a little unlikely to be cataloged an OUTLAW (bias). Still, if other people at the shrine lose trust in you because of your suspicious activities it would be wise to leave the shrine. The SHRINE ATTENDANT is crafty with close range weapons. You know, people do some weird stuff at shrines.
- SERIAL MURDERER - Superior prowess with all kinds of weapons. A role really focused on laying waste to opponents. Unemployed and shady, always slightly suspicious to bystanders. Top priority target in pursuits. It should go without saying, but this character is an OUTLAW right off the bat. Decides where to live.
- TERRORIST - Superior prowess with traps and explosives (yes, explosives). Superior running speed but average physical strength. Does not call the attention as much as SERIAL MURDERER does on the street and is second in pursuit priority only to him as well. Another instant OUTLAW. Homeless.
- POLICE CHIEF - Cannot be labeled as OUTLAW. May decide to label other players as OUTLAWS as soon as someone dies. Murderers and law breakers can be covered up by this player, and this player may also frame innocent characters, at the cost of making them harder to find (I doubt some diary holders would want to go out with OUTLAW label on their heads). Might be given a hard time by the POLICE OFFICER diary holder working in his own department. Often stays at the Police Department at night and as such he has decided to stay in it for the duration of the game, unless he goes out to murder or investigate.
- POLICE OFFICER - Cannot be labeled as OUTLAW. That is pretty much it. Should watch out for POLICE CHIEF. May decide where his home is located.
- DETECTIVE - Cannot be labeled as OUTLAW, cannot be pursued, but receives no kind of public assistance and is homeless.