Topic: Cells - Nantes 1944
I'd like to try out a game I and three of my friends from my school made. EDIT: This is an actual stand-alone computer game, not a roleplaying scenario. Here's the introduction I gave about it in a presentation:
"The Cells is a round-based, multiplayer game. The players are divided into two teams with different victory conditions: There are a set of important targets, such as German military structures in the game. The French Resistance tries to destroy those targets while the Gestapo tries to protect them.
The trick is, that to achieve their goals, the Resistance has to work together. For each target, there's a number indicating the strenght of its defences. Only if that many players or more attack the target at the same time, will the target be destroyed. To coordinate, the players have to build a network of contacts, to organize as CELLS.
At the same time, the Gestapo players must try to infiltrate these cells, to find out the dates and targets of the planned attacks. This is possible, because nobody knows on which side the other players are. If Gestapo manages to find out about an attack, they can send troops to protect that target that day, which will foil any attack, regardless of the amount of attackers.
Then how does all this information spread? Quite simple: In in-game chat sessions between groups of two or more people. The chat is the very core of the game, where a variety of trust games take place as the players try to figure out who to tell what information. In addition to attack plans, they may share their suspicions about others, try to trick spies into revealing themselves or basically anything related. All of this under the constant threat of being listened in by a third party.
To support these core mechanics, there are mechanics for spying on other people's actions, counterspying, and arresting and interrogating other players in Gestapo's name.
The game is all about team play: No individual score is kept. Instead, each player collects points for their team - the Resistance or Gestapo."
In addition to these game mechanics, Cells features atmospheric narratives by Raisa Omaheimo and Jarno Koponen, as well as great illustrations by Jukka Liukkonen. You can see some sketches here (they haven't changed much, actually):
I suggest we gather together a group to play this game on Monday 27.8.2007 at 19:00 CEST(EDITED). EDIT: We'll be aiming at a 2 - 3 hour game. Please mention in this thread if you're interested. We need about ten players, but no amount is too many! I'll be recruiting my other friends as well, and don't hesitate to tell your friends either!
EDIT: To run the game, you need Java 5.0 or higher (Java 1.5.something is the same as Java 5.0, curiously). You can install it on your operating system of choice here.
