Rapid Fire Trial: Instant Message Trials

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Rapid Fire Trial

This topic comes up after the first "trial" of Air's game No More Lies, where Monaca was killed by Nicolas. It was your fairly standard murder, a knife to face, bloody handprints all over the place. The main thing that happened was there was no trial on the forum. Instead, all discussion occurred in the "Coms Device Chat" which is essentially a group chat of everyone in the game who is online. In this case it was through Discord but it could happen in Skype too.

I am going to unofficially dub trials that occur in an Instant Messaging system such as Skype or Discord "Rapid Fire Trials." This is because they tend to occur very quickly as players don't wait for others to post and instead just talk away. There are some benefits and disadvantages to this that I see, but I am honestly not terribly sure about whether its a good or a bad idea.

Advantages:
-Talk and Trial: Ain't gonna deny it, its a LOT easier to have idle banter and debate in a IM system than the forum. Since posting time is so much shorter and text is more condensed its much easier and more natural to make short comments like in a conversation such as "Yes, I agree with that" or "eh, I am not sure how I feel about that." The forum its really awkward to make those kinds of posts since you take up a large amount of space just by your forum account, box, signature, and etc. The Forum feels like it gets dominated by large monologue theory posts and short posts get skipped over, ignored, and the like.
-Easy RPeasy: Its easier to RP with short posts. Some characters are just UNLIKELY to ever monologue or throw out massive theories and instead are short on words. They contribute to the trial by agreeing or disagreeing, but don't really try to push the trial in a new direction. Similar to before, in the Forum Format, they probably just wouldn't post so at least making it easy for them to state their opinion is a good thing. Any participation is better than no participation(except with voting for random at the end.)
-Gotta Go Fast: Trials go faster this way. Skip all the wait for others to post and forum load times and it turns out a in depth discussion can occur quite rapidly. Some trials you want to last for certain amounts of time, but with IM they are quicker and don't tend to just pause the game for 3+ days.
-Didn't Read the Rules Anyway: Look, its no secret that many players don't even bother to LOOK at the rules, let alone read them. People talk in skype about trials all the time and have to be CONSTANTLY reminded to do it in thread. Putting it in IM doesn't solve the problem, but its clearly a more natural flow than forcing it on the Forum.

Disadvantages
-Talk and Talk: Since its so easy to talk, its very easy to talk and shift off topic. Its harder to start talking about something totally unrelated on the forum, but with IM the train gets derailed quite quickly. Just means more rule enforcement on the MMs side. Most likely requires a unique group to be generated per trial for proper tracking and On Topic Management
-Reviewing the Case: On the flip side of the easier to talk bit, it becomes much more painful to review. Whether its a player trying to re-read the trial or the mastermind trying to review opinions. Navigating Chat history back and forth is much more awkward than the page organization on the forum. God forbid its Discord where you can't ctrl+F to find something specific.
-Toolless: As far as I am aware, the IM systems don't have a whole lot of text editing features and image's tend to be links or small pictures you can click on to get sent somewhere. Systems like Color Truth just won't work. Verbal Bullets would be tough too since tracking correct usage is nigh on impossible. Due to this, posts have less impact than if they were made carefully on the forum as a counter play post.
-TL;DR: People skip the skype chat ALL the time. It wouldn't surprise me to see people regularly skip to the bottom of the trial logs and go "What happened while I was gone." instead of reading the IM history. This ruins any BIG posts made by players as Monologues get Monoignored.


I am curious what others see in this. Are there other benefits or disadvantages to Rapid Fire Trials? Is there a particular reason you prefer one over the other? And so on. I don't really have an opinion on it as I see it as a win some lose some kind thing that some people like and others don't. If you do like it, do you have a kind of system in mind for trial voting and progression? 

[King V]

I feel like this type of trial corresponds to a specific type of murder, a very simple murder where almost all of the evidence is found by the players in a very short period of time. If the murder has a few layers of complexity to it (i.e. several different types of wounds to hide the cause of death), or not all of the evidence has been found, this type of trial doesn't work since there is much more room for doubt and discussions will get much more in-depth.

Overall, I feel like people are just going to do this anyway for a fairly simple murder, even with a trial thread made. I think it's still better to have a trial thread so theories, accusations, and voting can be done formally, but maybe allow some brief in-character discussions in chat so people can participate more.

[LunarFlare]

I feel as though this yes, seems to be a good idea, but there also is one more flaw that isn't specified.

Because this is a forum, you, if you're the killer, have time to think about what you're saying in a trial that effects the whole case.

You could easily go into panic mode and give up your role, fast. To others, this could either be fun, or could ruin the game completely.

Also, not everyone has Skype, so this plan can't even function properly unless all 127 members join Skype, or some other platform, which is highly unrealistic when only 40 people are in the group chat already.

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Typed this up like 5 times trying to not sound like a horrible person, but it always comes out this way. So Imma gonna be short and brutal.

A. Skype is required to play MMG. Its in the rules. Therefore, only people who have skype will be playing. Therefore, this system will never have a player who doesn't have skype. If there is a game which doesn't require skype, then that game will most likely be using a different trial ruleset.

B. Games are competitive by nature. The best player wins. If you panic in trial immediately and give yourself up, you lost. You are bad at trials, simple as that. I don't expect everyone to be good at them. I do expect everyone to get better over time though. If you panic and give yourself up for a non-RP reason, I guarantee you won't do it again. Pain is an excellent teacher in this case.

C. How people react to things is entirely unique to them. Saku ragequits and hates games if at any point he gets overpowered or outplayed by another player. There are several other people I could name who still play these games and react HORRIBLY to situations they don't like. Slow Trials ruin the game for me currently. I LOVE to monologue my reasoning and try to capture the killer in my logic. But NOBODY murders in a fashion that makes that enjoyable at the moment. Currently we have ALOT, and I mean ALOT, of Random "LOL I SEE HIM AND I HIT HIM WITH BASEBALL BAT" murders. Having to have days long slow forum conversations about murders that have no planning and are made by people who have no intention of making an interesting murder are terrible. I hate them with a passion. Just cause I don't like it and it "ruins the game completely" for me is not reason to disregard the system. Same with Rapid Fire Trials. You can't please everyone, but the goal is to please as many as possible. (Yes I am biased cause I am not having fun with the current system)

D. Catching people's mistakes in quick dialogue is a method of deducing the culprit. DR1 and DR2 both have trials like this where the killer falls under suspicion due to a mistake in speech and from then on its just a snowball downhill. Its an alternate playstyle, some people will like it, some won't. Again, if YOU make the mistake, its YOUR fault, not the system's fault.

[Daiwa Scarlet]

I think a mix of both would work. Just have official/important posts up on forum or players record the log. Bullets or colored truths can be used on the forum specifically while the discussion can happen on skype. This could keep the forum clutter free with all the main points being visible.

Best to just take the best of both ;p