Talk:Motorcade

Old forum comments

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I'm going to be running this on the UC Berkeley campus and I want to scale it down to a grid-like plaza on campus, where students can only move on the brick borders. (See here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.176059,61.347656&ie=UTF8&ll=37.869217,-122.259982&spn=0.00104,0.001872&t=h&z=19 )

So I'm looking at how to accommodate the smaller scale of it all - I'm thinking that blockaders can only blockade for 30 seconds, or maybe some time limit along those lines since there's no buildings to obscure movements and it's a wide open plaza? Any suggestions? --Robert Yang (talk) 29 January 2009

On second thought a time limit for blockades is totally daft and makes the end condition for Robbers impossible to fulfill. Hm.

Also, it'd be with about 20-30 people. --Robert Yang (talk) 29 January 2009

Interesting. It'd be quite a different game without the "ambush" mechanic, and life would become a lot tougher for the Robbers if their positions were always visible.

One way to lessen the chaos of a smaller playing area would be to make the game turn-based ("All cops move along one street each! Now all robbers!"), but by this point you're playing a boardgame and would probably be better off with a large-scale version of a proven classic such as Fox and Geese or Blue and Gray.

A better solution might be to let the Robbers hide in a crowd. Of twenty players, four are Cops, four are Robbers and twelve are members of the public (who just mill around the playing area with no personal goal). The Robbers know who the Cops are, but not vice versa. At the start of the game the Cops have to leave the area while the Robbers privately plan their attack; the Cops then have to navigate the grid looking out for suspiciously intentional formations ahead of them. There'd be no "roadblock" mechanic; players just couldn't pass each other on the grid, and would have to stop or turn around if they ran into someone.

Good luck with it - let us know how it goes. --Kevan (talk) 29 January 2009

... and if the Robbers turn out to be too hard to spot in the crowd, you could have the neutral players each pick a simple travel pattern ("back and forth along one street", "turn left when you hit a wall", and always "if you're face-to-face stuck, turn round"), so that the Robbers would have to fake one and subtly deviate from it. --Kevan (talk) 29 January 2009

Okay so I ran a version where people had to form "conga line" motorcades and Larger motorcades could bypass smaller motorcades. I thought it'd be a simple enough rule but it quickly turned bad because it required too much math, questions over "what was a conga line," people running across disregarding streets, etc.

I think next time I'll try it turn-based with that social stealth element. Less math involved = more fun, I've decided. --Robert Yang (talk) 30 January 2009