Mafiascum.net

Hello! You know what Telephone Pictionary is, yes? Good, Good. Here in this topic is one mutation which I would like to focus gro- I mean run by you.

Chain Alpha takes the concept of Telephone Pictionary, and restricts it to just one chain. "Well that doesn't sound real fun, Jake!" Ah, but the catch is that anyone may participate, with a few technicalities. Here are the Full rules of Chain Alpha:

Chain Alpha

Chain Alpha is a mutation of Telephone Pictionary. It's more open souse, more immediate, and more fun!

The moderator (me) starts off the chain with a sentence, and then anyone may reply with a picture. You are allowed a reservation post if you are a slow artist, however it will bs voided if you don't submit anything in 3 days. After that player submits a picture in-thread, anyone may submit a sentence describing that picture in-thread. Rinse and repeat.
You may not make a picture/sentence if you participated in the last 4 links. This is to make sure that everyone else gets a chance to participate.

The game is complete if no one submits anything for 1 week. If a player made a reservation post, wait until their post is voided to start the 1 week countdown.

Doing just a single chain and opting in when it's ready might help spur participation. But wouldn't posting the chain publicly affect how it mutates?

I understood only the last sentence of that.

Yeah, I understand that making the chain public as it's being made will have a considerable impact on how it mutates. I kinda want it to be run like a modless Grand Idea Mafia game, where you put more trust in the players and run on more of a code of honor than a secure trustless system.

Hm, I don't think you're going to quite get the same sort of effect you'd get from telephone pictionary because part of what makes that actually work well is that you don't know what other people have done, so you can't actually refer back to anything. So I think calling this a Telephone Pictionary variant is a bit misguided. This is more just collaborative storytelling/art.

I assume we'd need to basically spoiler every item to get any effect, and then you'll still know what has been said before hand.

I have also thought about a variation where everyone actually gets the same starting sentence, (one of the confusing hard to draw ones) and then seeing what happens.

What about this?

One chain, started by the mod. Done in secret, like a normal game would be - but only one chain, and the mod posts where it is and who's worked on it so far?

So something like:

Mod: Need an artist for Round 2.
...
Mod: Jake The Wolfie's claimed it and has the sentence. Deadline: <X>.
...
Mod: Jake The Wolfie's done. Now need a sentence writer for Round 3.
...
Mod: Farren's claimed the sentence and has the picture. Deadline: <Y>.
...
Mod: Farren's contributed a sentence. Now need an artist for Round 4.
...

repeat until X time passes without anyone new stepping forward, then reveal the whole thing at once. Only difference would be, instead of everyone having to commit to 7 sentences and 6 pictures over a few weeks, it's just committing to one thing.

Yeah see that would work a whole lot better there if you want to keep it a Telephone Pictionary variant.

I don't know how this would mesh well with my other idea I hax, where if you had a better/different idea for a link, you could branch off from the main branch to make your own chain.

Could allow multiple submissions at designated points.

Mod: Looking for 1-2 artists for Round 2.

Then if you get two artists, round 3a / round 3b get started in the next loop. Of course, more breadth (branchoffs) means less depth (round numbers) - or more contamination (people participating multiple times in the chain / having more knowledge about the chain than a single link). And I think keeping contamination at zero is pretty important for the spirit of the activity in general.