The Mole (SDMB game and idea)

The Game Room
1

So I was just sitting here thinking about games and suddenly was hit by–what I think is–a good idea for a game on here.

It would be similar to Mafia a bit, in some ways, and would be based on the game show The Mole.

For those who have never seen the show, it’s about a group of players (about 10-14) who all have to do certain tasks and puzzles, and among them there is a mole…which is a player who secretly wants them to fail at every mission and tries to sabotage each one so that they don’t succeed. In order to do this successfully, they must be subtle, sneaky, and not make it seem like any “mistakes” they make are intentional.
Added to this is that not every puzzle or challenge is easy…some would be quite hard with very good potential of REAL players screwing up or making real mistakes…so that’s where it gets interesting.

Also, there are “Rounds”…each round has one of the team events and each one ends with everyone being quizzed (this will probably take place in PM) on who they think the mole is. It will be questions about the mole and whoever gets the LEAST number of correct answers right is eliminated.

Anyway, ONLINE, obviously it would be limited to group tasks we could only do in this thread, but give me a little bit more time to think about it and I think I’ll be able to come up with some pretty good ideas for group tasks.
I also think it might be a little bit more fun to have more than one mole…maybe 2-3, and if any of them are figured out or guessed by the majority of the “real” players, then they’d be eliminated until only one mole remains (and then going with the questions from then on).

Feel free to give some suggestions or comments in here, also.
I think this could really be a good game if it was given a chance.

2

I’m seeing a dual objective for the Mole: He wants the others to fail at the first-order tasks, but he also wants to remain hidden. How are these balanced? Or, to put it more precisely, what are the win conditions?

3

The winner will be whoever can answer the most questions about the mole through all the rounds and ultimately figure out who the mole is.
The mole can’t win.

As for being balanced, not sure I’m understanding your question…it’s very easy to keep hidden yet subtly try to cause the team to lose at tasks. Since most of the challenges would require things that ANYONE on the team could mess up on, it would be fairly hard to discover whose mistakes are real and whose mistakes are the mole’s.

For example: Suppose I said "I want everyone to count backwards from ten, in order, and there can’t be any mistakes or else you all fail (I.E. no double numbers). Suppose ALL players in the game are online at the time. Say two people post “8” at the same time (or one just ahead of the other). That’s a fail…but did the second person post 8 on purpose just to get everyone a fail? Or was it not the mole, but rather just a person who made a mistake and didn’t see the previous “8”/didn’t preview in time?

Added to this is that I’ll allow discussion to go on during the game, so that anyone could explain their actions/reasoning/mistakes.

This is a pretty crappy example, though…as none of the challenges would be that simple or ordinary/boring…just a very simple example for example purposes.

I think if you saw the game being played, it would explain it better and give you a better idea of how it goes.

4

Sounds fun. I’m in if we get enough players.

5

My favorite reality show of all time.

I am in 1000%