Are You A Cultist? is a play-by-post LiveJournal game based off of the Cthulhu Mythos-themed party game Do You Worship Cthulhu? with some additional, original rules and roles adapted from Millers Hollow to fit the theme.
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parzanese has given me permission to use the material from his Millers Hollow LJ game.The game takes place in sunny Innsmouth, Massachusetts, a delightful little hamlet by the sea. The weather is mild, the Villagers polite and unassuming if distant, and the near-by coastal waters are teaming with fish. There's Mrs. Crabtree's Aquarium and Bed and Breakfast, the village mortuary run by drfinch, or the old arcade that only has three versions of Space Invaders, half-fucntioning Mrs. Pac-man, and a Centipede that just...laughs. There are the quiet woods to walk in, the beaches to sun on, and Cultists.
Yes, Cultists.
The Goal
Frankly put the goal of Are You A Cultist? is to survive, and not only survive but to determine who amongst the players is a Cultist (or something worse) and stop them before the Cultists successfully sacrifice all of the players and awaken an ancient horror from beyond the stars and time.
How many Cultists there are in Innsmouth is unknown, the number will vary depending on the number of players (anywhere between one and four), and no one is quite sure if their neighbor worships some unspeakable evil. Every night the Cultists meet together, somewhere, to discuss who they will offer up before finally stepping out into the night to commit their murderous sacrifice. During the next day the surviving members of the village (or tourists who happened to end up trapped in the town), including the stealthy Cultists, will discover their missing neighbor and gather together to chose one member of the town to lynch (decided on by a vote), hoping that they will get a killer. Later that night, any surviving Cultists will get together and chose a new victim. This continues until all of the Villagers have lynched the Cultists or the Cultists are the only ones left, completing their great ceremony and awakening an ancient horror.
Who plays what?
Before the game begins roles will be assigned at random using a dice rolling system or hamete virtual dice server. All roles present in the game, but not who each role is, will be announced before the start of the game so players know what to expect unless it is a TRUE BLIND GAME in which no one will know what roles there are or how many there might be.
At that point any roles that have special actions will get a chance to act before the first Day Time Round of the game where the villages decide whom to kill (so, the Private Investigator would get a chance to spy on a member of the village).
Day Time Round
The Day Time/Lynching Round begins at 11 AM on the first day of game and lasts for approximately twenty-four hours. During this round anything and everything goes, put forth any reasoning you wish; the purpose of this round is to attempt to find, through reasoning, trickery, or dumb luck, who a Cultist is and then vote to lynch them (or deciding they are the weakest link and sending them home without any prizes if you don't like the "lynching" term). To vote someone, please state in the body of your post (not the subject line) vote person's LJ name. If you wish to change your vote write unvote first person's LJ name, vote new person's LJ name. It is acceptable to vote
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abstain as well if you wish to make it very clear that you are not voting with a purpose. All dialogue between players about the game should take place during the Day-Time Post (so please, limit off-post talking; I didn't listen to this rule once and it seriously impacted a game).Regarding "anything goes" - You can claim to be anything you want, make any accusations you want, try to strike any deals you want, lie, tell the truth, make wild promises both in-game, out-of-game, and for real life. Anything you commit to in-game will not be up-held out-of-game, therefore if you make any wild promises or bribes, you do not have to stand by them. Promises of anything not related to this game hold no weight in the game and should be treated as such.
One thing that is not allowed is re-posting of flavor text or referencing of any icons in posts. Filters will be used to delineate special information that particular roles can see (i.e. the Cultists will have their own filter, the private investigator have their own, etc.) and re-posting text from these filters is strictly disallowed. While a person can claim to be the Bodyguard, for instance, one should be able to support that claim on their own without relying on the special flavor text for their role to back up what they are saying.
As stated the Day Time Round will last from 11 AM until approximately the same time the next day at which point the moderator will comment that the thread is closed and all votes after that will not be counted. The votes will be tabulated and, at that point, the player with the most votes will be lynched (or shot, decapitated, fed to weasels, etc.). In the event of a tie of two or more players, a special Sudden Death voting period of two hours will commence between the players in the tie, after which the player in the tie with the most votes will be lynched. If the Sudden Death voting period ends and the tie persists or a new tie has been achieved (in the event that the votes were originally tied between three people and then end up tied between two out of the three), no one will be lynched; however, to make up for the lack of death and suffering the Cultists will sacrifice two members of the town that night.
Hey, you gotta keep those Great Old Ones appeased.
On the event of a Day Time Round starting at 11 AM on a Friday, the round will not close until approximately 11 AM the following Monday; this is to allow people who are away from their computers over the weekend a chance to participate and not be penalized.
Night Time Round
Once a player is lynched the Nigh Time Round will begin. During the Night Time is when all of the special roles will have a chance to act, each getting a post to which they can discuss how they are going to act. All actions during the night happen at approximately the same time with the exception of the Doctor who can save the sacrificed victim of the Cultists by administering medical aide; in this fashion, the Doctor is the last to act as they see the results of the Cultists discussion and can chose to act on it.
Cultists - The Cultists will get a chance to discuss who they wish to sacrifice. Once more than half of the Cultists have stated sacrifice player name, ten minutes later the post will be locked and that player will be sacrificed. Cultists can sacrifice each other if they chose to, Elder Gods aren't picky who their sacrifices.
If, for whatever reason, the Cultists can't come to a decision of who gets to be offered to an unspeakable horror, the moderator will use the Hamate site linked above to decide for them. Ancient evils have needs too and someone will be devoured.
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR - The Private Investigator is an independent contractor in Innsmouth. The P.I. counts as a Villager and is on their side (i.e. wants them to win) but has the special ability that once a night, sometimes even once before the game starts, they can find out the role of a particular player. They will only know if a person appears to be a Villager or a Cultist and there are some roles which may offer false readings and they will not be told if a player has a special role that would not reveal them as a Cultist or a Villager. A person who is a P.I. and is spied on by another P.I. reads only as a Villager.
Flavor text will announce who has been sacrificed or killed by some other fashion. The post with the flavor text will also be the post that starts the next Day Time Round.
There are numerous other roles that can be added to the game to create variety and complexity, all of which can be found here.
Death
In Innsmouth there's many ways that you could possibly meet your end. You could wind up a sacrifice to something with a name unpronounceable. You could be poisoned by the Doctor, killed by the Vigilante, taken out as part of a revenge attack by the Hunter, stalked by the Serial Killer or die by suicide when you watch your Lover murdered. At any rate, when a player is eliminated they are placed on the Watchers' List detailed below.
Unless the game is a "blind game" (detailed below), a player's role will be revealed when they die.
End Game
The game ends when the village lynches the last threat to their lives or the Cultists (or other things) are equal to or greater than the number of Villagers. It is possible to have Total Party Kills in the event of a Hunter-Cultist end game situation (the Cultist sacrifices the Hunter who revenge kills the Cultist) or something similar. The only one benefiting from this are the things beyond space and human knowing, so don't let it happen.
Logistics
As stated, there will be a number of filters used to provide information to certain players depending on their role. All players will have access to the Day Time filter to discuss, debate, argue, scheme, and lie during the Day Time Round. Specials (Cultists, Private Investigators, and others) will each have their own threads to say how they are acting during the Night Time Round.
Observers to the game and dead players will be placed on the Watcher's List. This will be a post that coincides with every Day Time Round (adding new players who have died to the filter) for eliminated players to discuss the game. People on the Watcher's List will also have access to all of the other threads so they will be able to see who the Cultists decide to kill, who the Private Investigator spies on, etc.
Player Responsibilities
While posting frequently can be fun (and dangerous, as some people take activity as a threat), it isn't necessary. Players are required to post at least once during a Day Time Round post, regardless of whether or not they vote; if two Day Time Round posts close and a player has not commented at least once then that player will commit suicide and be placed on the Watcher's List. If a player is going to be away from their computer for an extended period of up to four days, then that can be excused with prior warning.
As said above, discussion should remain on the appropriate post. If a player has been eliminated and is on the Watchers' List, it is their responsibility to not share any of the information that they learn by having access to all of the filters. Please, do not discuss the game in e-mail, chat, or outside of the appropriate posts.
Role-Playing With people's participation some players may decide to add role-play elements to their comments. While this is encouraged as something fun and interesting, it is not required. Role-play, it should be noted, can be used against a person (as
cuddlycthulhu learned to his dismay with the Great Waffle Murder of '09) and can be used as justification for deciding to lynch someone (although any justification can be used to decide to lynch someone). Special Variants
Blind - No roles are revealed at death.
True Blind - Roles are completely unknown except to individual players.
Cultist Telepathy - The Cultists have been blessed by their dark master. If a game has Cultist Telepathy there will be a special post put up each day that allows the Cultists to talk to each other. They can decide in this post who to sacrifice but, due to the fact that the telepathy happens during the day, they cannot officially announce who they are sacrificing until the Night Time post.
Multiple Private Investigators - In this variation there are multiple Private Investigators in the town. The Moderator will decide if the P.I.s are working together or separately. In the event that they are working together, they will get their own thread to discuss who to spy on and will spy on one person (if they can't make up their decision, the Moderator will flip a coin to chose between their two choices). If they are working separately, they will get their own thread and not know that the other person is a Private Investigator.