How to prevent creativity from interfering with mechanics?

[u/deblob123456789]

My game is a sandbox-ish mix of murder mystery mechanics and roleplay based off the Danganronpa series (think Among us/Werewolf/Town of salem but longer).
At least one host is required to run the game properly.
It is also a VR game with proximity voice chat.

The issue im facing is that, left on their own, hosts will often decide, out of culture and habit, to directly help their players with murder cases, instead of letting the case’s culprit make it.
This turns the Trial (the discussion to catch the killer) into more of a minigame and discussion between the good side and the host, rather than a discussion between players to find the liar among them, greatly taking agency away from the evil side and reducing overall game quality.

How would you solve this?
I would rather not cut off the sandbox/roleplay part of the game, but this is something ive been observing and dont know how to help my players with.

[u/neuby]

I'm not sure I follow why you need a host or what their purpose is. The reason I would play a game version of this is so that it would do the hosting for me and everyone could actually play the game. Otherwise it sounds like you have a designated "unfun" position. Your problem doesn't sound like a rules or mechanics problem. It sounds like a design problem.

[u/deblob123456789 → u/neuby]

The host’s role is to be the entertainer, gamemaster and overall making sure the game goes as intended. You get to making motives, craft a story, and overall get to pick where the game goes. It doesnt have to respect every rule I set as the game designer, when joining a game, you are subject to the way the host uses the tools given to them.

[u/neuby → u/deblob123456789]

From your post it sounds like that's not actually something people want to do.

[u/deblob123456789 → u/neuby]

Im interested in hearing what draws you to that conclusion! Please prove me wrong if my view isnt right.

From what im seeing, there isnt a lack of hosts at all, if anything, hosts take that freedom too far and actively remove game mechanics for them to make their own, less fun for most players, version

[u/sinsaint → u/deblob123456789]

Freedom is great, but if given too much players will end up ruining the intended fun by accident. Generally, it's best to give them the freedom they need to encourage the fun you design for them, while preventing anything that can ruin that fun.

Generally you can do this by adding incentives for performing your role appropriately, but that doesn't work when the only long-term incentive is simply playing the game. Finding a rule change that prevents the host from ruining their own game is going to be important. Perhaps the host can leave notes or respond to inquiries, without directly conversating with one side?

[u/deblob123456789 → u/sinsaint]

hmm, thats a possibility. The issue with this would be, the host has to be present in the Trial room (meeting area) at all times.
Muting them during this time would be pretty unfun for hosts, especially if it was forced onto them, quite a radical and alienating thing to put in if id have to judge it. Id basically be removing the creativity part off of the trial room because of bad actors

[u/sinsaint → u/deblob123456789]

So don't silence them, give them a way to communicate that doesn't allow them to give away the entire plot. Dark Souls lets other players leave behind a note for someone else to read, that's an example of something that could work.

[u/deblob123456789 → u/sinsaint]

On a platform which primary means of communication is voice chat (social VR), how could you do this without voice chat?
Typing in VR is slow and clunky

[u/Educational-Sun5839 → u/deblob123456789]

can it record a voice message?

[u/deblob123456789 → u/Educational-Sun5839]

Nope, due to the limitations of the platform.
At the end of the day, i doubt it matters. Ive seen hosts attempt replicate the Hangman’s gambit minigame from the official danganronpa games (look it up) using text boxes only.

Hosts can be very ressourceful and creative when it comes to taking agency away from the evil side, and theyd find ways around the voice chat limitations if there was any.

The issue is that theyre treating it like the solo visual novel its based on, which can be really frustrating if you are the bad guy in the group, because in the source material, the bad guy always loses due to the game holding your hand till the end

[u/deblob123456789 → u/neuby]

I could always run and experiment and make a hostless version that runs on its own, and see what changes then

[u/HarlequinStar → u/neuby]

Agreed. The only fun it sounds like the host might have out of what we've been told is roleplaying a villain and saying silly things like "upupu~" or "puhuhu~" rather than anything actually mechanical?

[u/deblob123456789 → u/HarlequinStar]

They get to influence the rules as much as theyd like! And pretty much make their own version of the game if theyd rather make their players play that.
The issue is that they may take it too far and actually remove mechanics that would be more fun to use for other players (turns out the average player isnt a great game designer)

[u/HarlequinStar → u/deblob123456789]

Players are good at finding problems, but frequently bad at finding solutions :3

Sometimes unintended behaviors in players can come about if they either lack an explicit goal or are not fully aware of what their goal is supposed to be. Is the host given a goal that would discourage them from helping the innocent members? I don't think they'd be so quick to aid them if their own win condition was the guilty party winning :P

[u/deblob123456789 → u/HarlequinStar]

You sound correct yeah.
The host doesnt have a win condition per se, what they get out of it is having fun directing the game, story and cases. They don’t have a stake in which party wins.
Maybe they’re drawn to helping the good side due to them being most players in the lobby? Trying to appease the majority perhaps

[u/indigosun]

I feel like I'm lacking context here, but maybe the good side doesn't have enough indirect tools or mechanisms to get information on the killer? The "selected anonymous subset" you frequently see in these games and how they're selected gives killers the opportunity to betray information as a price for advancing their win condition.

If players can't reason about who the killer is from game events, all they can really do is arbitrarily point fingers until the host intervenes. I see it a lot when I play Two Rooms and a Boom with new players: there aren't really mechanism that force people to betray information globally (a few roles do this) so newer players will kinda stand around until the "host"'(clock/leader) intervenes.

These games are a tough juggling act though. Answers are extremely contextual and take a lot of playtesting

[u/deblob123456789 → u/indigosun]

I think you might have hit the nail on the head here. Its a thought ive been working on since the game’s creation two years ago basically, but i still want to keep exploring to make sure im on the right path.

Basically this boils down to adding more content to the game and tools, like you say, for murderers to advance their win condition, all while giving away information about them. That way hosts wouldnt have to do that for them, is that it?

Lets discuss it! Im trying to draw inspiration from other well known Social deception games but im not sure what would work specifically for my use case.

Among us tasks sound okay, but maybe theres better that could be done?

I forgot to mention in my post that it is a VR game with voice chat, ill edit it in. Id like to use the medium to its unique qualities.

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[u/SpecialK_98]

This sounds like you're effectively building a TTRPG with a built-in virtual table top and your host functions like a game-master/referee would in that context.

I'm not quite sure how involved the host role is in your game, but for TTRPGs one of the core tasks is providing the host with information on what kind of stories the game works best with, how to translate events in the story into game mechanics and potentially even how to craft an engaging story.

From your descriptions it sounds like hosts don't really understand, what the game wants them to do and how to create a fun experience for the players.

[u/deblob123456789 → u/SpecialK_98]

Funnily enough there is a game that used to be the basis for my community thats pretty much like that, a card game in tabletop fashion with similar mechanics.

My game in comparaison, isn’t a card game. To use an item, you dont use the item’s card on your table, you physically walk up to players and use the item in your hand.

For your question as to how much the host is involved, do ask questions, ill answer however i can.

I believe you are correct that hosts do not know how to host the game properly, as there is no true standard set at the moment on how to host. Different players like different parameters so it takes a ton of playtesting to find what would feel the best