Hydra Discussion Thread

[xofelf]

I very much like the idea of them, especially how they were utilized in this past game. I don't know that I'd say having them in every game, but I think allowing them to give people a taste of Survivor with a safety rail is a great idea. Idk, I've always liked them. But i also think they should always be limited to 2 players max.

[xofelf]

Some mafia hydras have 3 sometimes. And I think 3 is too many.

From what I understand is while the benefit of having someone you can talk stuff over with and getting to take every other challenge off is a huge, I think there's some unique challenges too. Like, you have to make sure you're on the same page with the person. Sometimes using the same account posting can toss up token errors, and you can miss certain PMs by the other person looking at them and it being marked as read where you didn't read them. I also think if you end up paranoid about something and you both are, you end up in a very specific kind of feedback loop. I dont' think playing in a hydra gives a huge advantage over single players or disadvantages them either.

I also don't think having more than 3 hydras total is a good idea unless the whole game is hydras.

[xofelf]

You know how stoked for a full hydra game I would be? Like, yes, very yes.

[xofelf]

It's Eon's Partner Twist, but less gameable!

[xofelf]

Arkham City had it as a surprise hydra; the players were unaware that hydras were a possibility. It was done almost 100% for flavor reasons (mods can correct me if I'm wrong here.

No that's exactly it. Narninian came to me saying he wanted to try playing Two-Face as a hydra, was it possible? And it had never been done before so I thought about whether or not it was possible, and as it was an Arkham bastard game there was no reason to say no. And I said yes, but I would pick his hydra partner. I messaged Monty as he had just modded Narninian and asked if he would be interested in trying out this new concept as Monty was someone I trusted to do this in the fairest way possible and also had some familiarity with him to know what Narninian's specific quirks and pitfalls might be and if anybody could chameleon to someone else's style and balance them out, Monty could. But to limit the power two people in a slot, I instituted them having to have a joint skype(it was ages ago, okay?) chat with us mods and each other and do all communication with each other there, as well as being required to switch off every challenge. They could PM or confessionalize however they wanted, and it was up to them if they wanted to tell anybody they were a hydra in and out of confessional, we mods wouldn't say anything about it. I think that base ruleset is essentially what most people have used since? It sounds like it anyways.

[xofelf]

All of these games were either Advanced or Complex on the rating scale. In terms of which games should have them I would say that they should probably never be in a Vanilla game and used extremely sparingly in a Standard. If it IS a standard game then they should be limited in number and also expressly flagged out as such to the players.

Quick note to this - personal opinion here, but unless the hydras are a part of the mechanics of the game, it should be made aware

regardless of the game type.

I'd even take this a step further, and

force hydras to sign or otherwise make it VERY AWARE WHICH HEAD IS CURRENTLY ACTIVE.

I didn't force this in Barely Survivor, each hydra came to that decision on their own and I think it's very important for clarity reasons.

I mean I do also feel like there should've been different accounts for each of the two heads of the hydras.

Then you just create a groupchat with both of them and congratulations it's basically the same thing? Feels pointless and clogging.

And what happens when you have different non-strategy-related conversations with both heads? Feels confusing and clogging.

If they're signing their posts, it's exactly like being in a group chat. It's not that bad at all. It's really no different either way.

[xofelf]

I do appreciate people bringing up whether hydras existing or not would affect whether they would play games, that is a very important part of the discussion to have. And I do thank Silver for starting this discussion and getting a lot of people's views on it. It helps whether or not we want to allow them to be more normal or not, so thank you kindly for all of your thoughts and words here everybody.