Players in The Mole must work together to complete various physical and mental challenges to build up a significant cash prize for the winner. One of them, however, is "the mole," a double agent hired by the producers to sabotage the efforts of the group. From the article "The Mole" on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole Ever since I saw the first episode of the TV Series "The Mole" (see above link), I've loved the idea and couldn't wait for the next episode! Just think about the concept of the show: About 12-14 players arrive at a destination, none of them knew each other before. They will be together for a couple of weeks, all having a good time and having many experiences of life while going through a lot of challenges. But all of them constantly has one thing in their mind: Who is The Mole? And so I want to share this game idea with you, I will put much effort into finishing this idea myself, but of course I'd like feedback. Since I've loved playing strategy games before, and made one little turn-based strategy game my own, I will make also this one a strategy game (either turn-based or realtime, maybe a combination). A strategy game where the teams could be dynamically (depending on the current challenge), but in most challenges the players will team together against a computer AI controlled opponent. The units and "races" will be like the good old Warcraft 2 style. Archers, Footmen, Knights, Ballistas, etc. The biggest problem for me is, what kind of challenges/missions could be given to the players of a "The Mole"-strategy game so that each of the players are given the opportunity to try to sabotage the mission in a more or less discrete way? For a strategy game, The Mole can also be given special features or weapons - such as controlling parts of the computer AI, full sight on the map, extra resource bonuses, and maybe more. As you might have noticed, this is mainly ideas about the game project. But I personally think that it's a great game concept (or "game mode"?) so I will do my best to make it reality. Feedback and suggestions welcome :) Best Greetings, Simon from Sweden

We have this program here (in Holland) too and I'm an avid fan!

As to your game idea, I think a group of players can play The Mole while going on quests/missions in any (MMO)RPG out there. You just need an outside 'master' that appoints the mole and off you go. They all do a couple of missions, perhaps answer questions by the 'master' who then deems who's going to have to leave the challenge.

This is the game in its core form. Location and missions are secondary, so I think that you don't need to create a new game in order to play this. Furthermore, in a game made especially for The Mole, the missions would be limited to some number, as will the opportinuties of sabotaging. I think that after playing a couple of times, you'd know what to look for to spot the mole, hence ruining the experience.

You might want to set up a portal for some kind, which lets individuals play The Mole on any old (MOO)RPG and provide the service of the 'master' to them. But that's a whole different ballgame.

But there's also the copyright issue. I believe the Belgian company Woenstijnvis has the rights and they might not let you just write up a game that uses their rules, since the rules are their product. Make sure you have that covered.

hth,
CipherCraft

[Edited by - CipherCraft on March 12, 2007 10:54:53 AM]

This is a toughie really but one idea I've just had is to have a scouting/mole mode prior to the in game co-op action.

The way in which I would envisage this working would be once a team is formed prior to undertaking a mission, Hostage Rescue for example, each player will go into a spectator-esque mode in which they would get the opportunity to look around the level to devise the best route and/or strategy to achieve their goal. However whilst the other team members are scouting the level and devising the strategy (possibly done through chat or mic's or whatever) the randomly appointed mole would have the opportunity to go around the level and set up traps and such in a Dungeon Keeper type fashion.

Once in game play there would be subtleties for the players to observe, does player A seemingly avoid all the traps or does he seemingly purposefully trigger them all in an effort to avoid suspicion.

At the end of each round/mission/quest each player, excluding the mole, will get the opportunity to vote on who they thought was the mole, if they’re right they get a cash/points bonus and of course uncover the identity of the mole (giving them an advantage for other rounds knowing the mole status would cycle throughout the players evenly), if not then no bonus (and no advantage).

Hope you like.

From the words strategy and knights/footmen I get they idea that this is going to be set in like a Middle Ages kind of layout.
As for the mole's mission they just have to be anything considered traitorous back then:
-Stealing a important message
-Back-stabbing someone important without getting caught
-Listening in on the General's plans/strategy
-Warning the enemy before they are ambushed
-sabotaging a trap (ie:they roll logs down the hill-you put big boulders in the way)
Good luck.

For general-purpose gameplay, any multiplayer team-based game can have a "mole" so long as some actions can be taken in secret. The mole's job is simply to cause everyone to fail; essentially, when the game ends either the mole won, or everyone else did.

For a strategy game, your big problem is going to be finding ways to allow people to take actions in secret. There's a variety of ways to do this, but I'd recommend that whenever you give the mole a chance to do something, everyone else should be doing other individual things as well; this helps mask the fact that the mole is up to something on his own. Your second problem is finding ways for the secret actions to have effects on the game that are significant, but not game-breaking, while not immediately pinpointing the person who caused them. For example, if you force the party to split up for a while, and then later reconvene, and the path that the (secret) mole took is now covered with traps and ambushes, well, that wasn't very subtle, was it?

I played a Warcraft 3 custom map like this a while ago; one player is the 'Zergling' and the rest are human. The Zergling looks like the others but has special powers that he can use to attack other characters when no one's looking.

The map was a large base, with a large amount of space compared to the number of players. Each player only had one character, though, so that's a big difference.

You could make the resource production such that it must be spread out over a large area. Then, the mole could sabotage the other player's economy. The mole could also have access to units that aren't identifiable by player. (I.E. the raiding parties show up as black but the mole is the blue player.)

If you want to make a new game based around this concept that is one thing, but from a modding perspective this might be a cool new unit. Given a WW3 type situation if you made a unit which was like a spy, that could sneak undercover (cloaked, giving the opponent X% chance to discover the mole, also allowing defenses against said moles), into the enemy encampment. And if undiscovered could assume the shape of a peon or any certain type of unit (different levels of moles could assume higher and higher level of characters, level 1 mole maybe a peon or something small, level 2, maybe knights and the equivalent, and etc.) After you have infiltrated the encampment you would be able to control the mole as well as the other team, giving this privledge could be difficult depending on how you setup relationships between players and units. The damage could be done by the mole by providing the enemy with Fog of War removing, sabatoge cabilities (slower production of resources, stealing of gold and other resources, and I envision sedition where if a mole Knight was grouped with other enemy Knights a percentage roll could determine if the Mole converts or doesn't convert enemy units. Imagine a level 3 mole doing a sedition attack on the enemies army and a success was achieved (say 5% chance with such large number of units), game over for other guy.
A whole host of ideas could be modded from that, double-agents, defenses from moles, the potential for espionage to be as important as massing an army, and so forth. Sounds interesting to me.

C&C (RTS) has a spy unit that from the enemy point of view looks like a regular enemy soldier, to you it looks like a spy unit). You can use it to sabotage buildings (and steal technologies/money). In C&C dog units "smell" the spy, and a clever player can find spies without dogs (by moving the soldiers around and seeing which unit doesn't respond to its commands).

In a RPG you can use a shapeshifter unit to fit the plot better.

This can work much better on a "dungeon master" style game where you have lots of units that are AI controled and move around on their own (as opposed to Warcraft style games).

If you want to be more special than the "tech/money stealing sabotaging" spy,
you can have the "Mole" sabotage this way:
1) cast negative spells that have hidden effects, such as bad luck (-hit rolls, -savings throws, etc...). The players will not be aware that they are cursed nor see the mole casting the spells, they may just notice the game gets slightly harder when he is around.
2) poison food/water.
3) lead group into trap/ambush
4) 'accidentally' mess up ("oops, I meant to heal you but accidentally pressed the attack button instead"). this is problematic since AI doesn't "mess up".
5) blame someone else as a mole...
6) ruin defenses (lower the bridge, sleep the guards, etc...)
7) if the fights are with lots of units the mole can have zero damage attacks (which look real). On a 2-3 unit group fight that would be relatively easy to spot.

So Zomis, any response? What are you going to do?

CipherCraft

Quote:

Original post by nagromo I played a Warcraft 3 custom map like this a while ago; one player is the 'Zergling' and the rest are human. The Zergling looks like the others but has special powers that he can use to attack other characters when no one's looking.

There was another Warcraft 3 map like that, where you have a guy thats some sort of evil critter (werewolf, ghost, vampire) that has to kill all the other players. You can't tell who it is at the beginning of the game. The character is weak at the beginning, so the other players can team up and kill it if they know who it is. So you have to off people in secret, and then keep everyone in doubt about who it is.