Anonymous: The Game

[Freih]

I would like to propose a game. It's fairly complicated, so I'll leave the PR for actual game threads and focus on the rules now.

The concept is simple: For 18 rounds, the players submit anonymous messages to the game thread - at the end of each round, the dealer posts the messages submitted during the round. The goal is to identify the senders of this anonymous messages. To make sure there are clues to who the senders are, all the game actions are done using these messages. There are two such actions: making a claim as to who sent some message, and making a vote.
There are six voting phases, each lasting three rounds. In each voting phase, each player must submit three votes. In the end of each voting phase, the player with the most votes wins an ante from everyone else.

Now, let's get to the specifics.

All players start with 0 points - the currency for this game. Obviously, points can go in the negative. The ante is initially 3 points. Each six rounds the ante increases by 1 point, so it reaches 5 points by the end of the game.

In each of the 18 rounds, players can submit as many messages as they want, and a submission is done by PMing the dealer with the message. At the end of each round, the dealer assigns a unique ID to each new message (within the rounds, the IDs should not indicate the order the messages were sent in), and then posts the new messages (along with their IDs) in the game thread. Additionally, the dealer processes any other actions stated in these messages.

For example, I could send the following PM to the dealer:

I submit the following two anonymous messages:

Although he sucks, I vote for Player1. Also, Message #6 was sent by Player3.

PS. Player 3 intends to betray their alliance. And I vote for Player4

I vote for Player4

Note: Do not forget to add quotes around the messages you submit to avoid confusion.

Then the dealer posts the following in the game thread (of course, with appropriate IDs):


Message #11:

Although he sucks, I vote for Player1. Also, Message #6 was sent by Player3.

PS. Player 3 intends to betray their alliance. And I vote for Player4

I vote for Player4

Message #9:

I vote for Player4

Additionally, since these messages contain votes and claims, those should be processed.

Claims: If these messages contain the text:

Message #insert_ID belongs to insert_name

then the sender makes a claim that the specified message has been sent by the specified player. The claim is considered to be correct if all the following are true:
1) The claimed sender (the player named inserted_name) is not the person making the claim.
2) The specified message was not sent by the person making the claim.
3) The specified message not been subject to a correct claim in any of the previous rounds.
4) The same person has not made a correct claim regarding the same message during the same round.
5) The claimed sender is indeed the sender of the specified message.

If the claim is correct, the person making it receives one ante from the claimed sender, and the specified message is marked as claimed (but its sender is not publicly announced).
Otherwise, if the claim is not correct because points 1, 2, 3, or 4 are not satisfied, the person making it loses 1 ante to the LGT.
Otherwise, if the claim is not correct due to point 5, the player making it loses one ante to the claimed sender and one ante to the actual sender, for a total of two antes.
Note that you may claim any unclaimed message since the beginning of the game, and more than one player may successfully claim a message if they do so during the same round.

Additionally, if during the same round, several identical messages are sent, since they would be indistinguishable from one another, claims of the following form are also allowed:

Messages #insert_ID1 and #insert_ID2 belong to insert_name and insert_name

.
Such claims are allowed only if the specified messages are indeed identical. If they are not identical, then this is not considered to be a claim and thus not processed by the dealer. The rules for correctness of such claims are similar to the rules for correctness
1) The person making the claim is not any of the claimed senders.
2) None of the specified messages were sent by the person making the claim.
3) None of the specified messages has been subject to a correct claim in any of the previous rounds.
4) The person person has not made a correct claim regarding any of the specified messages during the same round.
5) The claimed senders are indeed the senders of the specified messages (the order doesn't matter).

Voting: If a message contain the following text:

I vote for insert_name

Then the sender is voting for the specified player. If the text appears more then once in the same message, only the first appearance is taken into consideration, thus only one vote per message is allowed. The vote is considered valid if the following is true: The sender has made no more than two votes during the same vote session.
If the vote is invalid, the sender loses two anted to the LGT. Otherwise, the player receiving the vote gets one vote.
At the end of every vote session (lasting three rounds), the player with the most votes wins one ante from everyone else, and the vote counts are reset. Also, at this point, if anyone has sent in less than three votes since the previous vote reset (or the beginning of the game) they lose four antes to the LGT for each vote they are missing.

At the end of each round, a scoreboard with each player's votes is updated. Also, at the end of every other voting phase, everyone's score is announced.

Note that the voting requirements implicitly require everyone to send in at least three anonymous messages during every vote session.

Thus, when the dealer processes the example messages from above, they would process the following actions:
1) A vote for Player1.
2) A claim that Message #6 was sent by Player3.
3) A vote for Player4.

[Freih]

And Cyrus's posting reminded me: I forgot to mention the required players.
The game makes sense with at least three players, and to account for possible inactivities, four are required in order to start the game. Five players is optimal, and more could play (but if too many sign up, which won't happen because there aren't that many active members, I'll make minor adjustments).

And, of course, considering the complexity of the game, there will be a rehearsal before the actual game. For the rehearsal, there will be only four rounds: one voting phase, plus one additional round. In that additional round, no votes will be processed; only claims.