Mechanic Abuse: Hiding

[Yuni Shingyouji]

Alright, so. I would like to officially discuss the Hiding Mechanic after an incident in the first murder of Season Paradise, I feel like this has been a not-very-well talked about situation all the way back since Season 3 where Eclipse and Thrax abused this mechanic to win the season, and this incident was heavily frowned upon.

Ever since then, I don't think this mechanic has been (successfully) abused since, where the culprit simply hides throughout the entire trial and investigation, thus making a "trial" never truly exist, and leaving most votes to guesswork and process of vague elimination.

Personally, I'm pretty against this mechanic, as you can see, so I apologize in advance for any bias in this post (as there is).


Please openly discuss how you feel about this mechanic, and personally, whether or not it should be banned in stone. The issue with a straight ban, however, is that it disallows similar (yet not exact) tactics that are creative, which I'm not all for eliminating. 


Anyway, my personal thing is just this: Masterminds, do NOT allow people to abuse your mechanics and ruin the game for the other players. Know the way the game works, they're trials for a reason. Do not let someone hide out for an entire trial, step in and stop it (and no, not at the end). I think that we simply need to acknowledge this mechanic abuse between Masterminds and never allow it to happen, and that's sort of final.
While it's true this is RP and a real person does have to will to come to said conclusion, the problem is that with how often players are AFK, this system is extremely unrealistic to resolve. It rids of all mechanics in the "How To Play The Game" Rules thread that explains how trials work (thus, this mechanic is technically against the rules), and is simply too easy to execute / abuse.

Anyway, please feel free to discuss!

[John Dark Souls]

『Well, as you might have guessed from skype conversations in S. Paradise chat already, I don't even see what I did as abuse. Can't say the same about S3 since you guys only mentioned it but never gave a full detailed report on how that game worked and how exactly the hiding was used there.』

『First of all, the whole crying of people about hiding comes from one point. From culprit not appearing at trial. Sure, culprit hiding on purpose in order not to appear in trial sounds unfair from investigator side. But lets look at this from another side. Lets look at all possible reasons for person not to appear in trial:』

『What if the person not appearing in trial is actually a second corpse that players have been 2scrubby to even find, and whole purpose of murdering and hiding the corpse was culprit's plan to throw trial off? Does mastermind have to forcefully summon the corpse and throw it out into the trial to give additional evidence to investigator side?』

『What if say, game has a 2 people murdered limit per trial and penalty is death, and then culprit murders 2 people but a 3rd enters scene and witnesses the murder, the culprit manages to apprehend and KO the witness, tie them down, kidnap and hide in some obscure place? Does mastermind have to forcefully summon the kidnapped person and let them be untied by others and outright reveal the culprit to investigator side?』

『What if say, culprit just did a murder with an axe but as soon as they did it, they heard footsteps and hid behind say a pillar and then few people entered and found the corpse but instead of looking around properly just decided to stand guard and thus never let culprit go out or they would be found? Does mastermind have to forcefully summon the culprit all blood covered and with axe in hand into trial saying "Hey guys, here's that culprit you were looking for!"??』

『I can come up with a bunch of other scenarios where forcing participation in trial by bringing people into it would screw up culprit and literally bring the answer on the plate to investigators. I know that both as investigator, murderer and a mastermind, I would hate for that to happen, and it would only make me salty. Even if I wasn't the culprit in that case, I would just outright refuse to vote for culprit if that kind of unfair thing was to happen, but I know thats not how all the sheep players in this game work. They will just be like "Ah well, there goes the culprit, guess we just bandwagon vote them because they are culprit and it doesn't matter if its fair or not."』

『I'm not saying that any and all hiding to elude the trial should be allowed. I just want to say that there should be exceptions. And if exceptions were to happen, masterminds should probably think up countermeasures to still make trials solveable even without culprit appearing in trial, instead of just giving the answer away to investigators who would rather cry to mastermind how hiding is op rather than try to think of any other ways to condemn the culprit.』

[Exusiai]

In a perspective not too familiar with the incidents of Season 3 or Season Paradise, I agree that there are situations where a mastermind shouldn't take unnecessary steps to reveal a person in hiding.
From what I heard on the off-topic chat, regarding Season Paradise, the issue seemed to be that the "door" a player had hid behind was not mentioned in the room description. Of course, adding a door later on a separate line or paragraph of a post would draw attention, but usually, players won't notice any edits to the original body of a post, unless the change is along the lines of a blood trail leading to a decaying corpse.
For example, if the original room description post was as the following:
"It's a room with stainless white walls on all sides. Although due to the blinding paleness of the room, it is difficult to discern the dimensions of the room and where each wall connects. Entering the room, you feel your sense of balance thrown slightly off, but you cannot tell in which wall the room is leaning or as to why you feel so. Even though there seems to be no openings in the room for natural lighting to enter into, there doesn't seem to be a single shadow in the room besides your own and a water fountain placed rather conspicuously in what can be assumed as the center of the room."

In seasons where there are at least thirty rooms, it is unlikely for a player to notice the slight change as in the following version:
"It's a room with stainless white walls on all sides. Although due to the blinding paleness of the room, it is difficult to discern the dimensions of the room and where each wall connects. Entering the room, you feel your sense of balance thrown slightly off, but you cannot tell in which wall the room is leaning or as to why you feel so. The heavy metal door from where you came from doesn't seem to have a handle or knob, but it swings open easily with a push. Even though there seems to be no openings in the room for natural lighting to enter into, there doesn't seem to be a single shadow in the room besides your own and a water fountain placed rather conspicuously in what can be assumed as the center of the room."
The above version is partially bolded for the sake of emphasizing the change to the room description. In an actual season, a mastermind wouldn't bold sentences, even if the sentence regarded a corpse or splatters of blood leading elsewhere.

Referring back to the thread for the general rules of Murder Mystery Games, "your action is only limited by your own imagination." Under the "Action" portion of that thread, hiding is included as an action. Now, this brings up the issue of what is imagined. Some room descriptions end up quite vague in important scenarios and this creates different interpretations of the "door" in Season Paradise. Because a door was never mentioned in the room description, a player can just as easily imagine that each personal room has a transparent glass door that has been reinforced in the same method a window would or that each personal room did not have a visible barrier at all, but were instead blocked by some force field. Both of the possibilities sound rather far-fetched, but they still count as possibilities given the nature of Season Paradise, and even if the season did not take magic or unknown forces into account, a person could have also pictured a sliding door rather than a door with hinges.
Every host has his or her own way of typing and conveying details yet this should not affect how detailed a paragraph or a handful of handfuls should or can be. One mastermind may phrase a door as a "wooden slab connected to steel hinges" and another mastermind may display "a door made of oak with a brass knob." Either way, they both describe a wooden door that swings open and closed.

I'm probably not a suitable person to discuss about the abuse of the hiding action since I've never been directly involved in a situation in which it grew to a degree in which it could be called "abuse," much less hosted a season before, so I probably shouldn't be probing on how room descriptions are typed.