Rationalist Clue

If you did design this game,

The game rules chattily assure you that the murder did not take place in the Lab, on the Table, or by the Detector…but of course this is simply disinformation coming from a source that you are likely to erroneously assume is authoritative, even though you have no firm evidence that the rulebook is a reliable narrator.

...should be in the rulebook.

As a modification for Clue, I think this will end poorly. But I think the idea of a rationalist board game is one that could end well.

Boil this down to the essentials. What is the goal of the game? What is the victory condition? What is the core mechanism?

Here's a brief guess/sketch:

The game is designed to teach reasoning under uncertainty. The victory condition could be either coming to the correct conclusion first or having come to the best conclusions at lowest cost. The core mechanism is integrating new information with old information.

The tenor of the game will be set by the victory condition. A set of reveals- say there are three cards you want to guess, and they are flipped over one by one at various stages of the game- where people place bets for victory points seems superior to a race to one correct answer.

For example, let us consider a three player game. There are color cards, shape cards, and material cards. There are three cards of three types (red, blue green; circle, triangle, square; wood, metal, glass). Each deck of 9 cards is shuffled, and one is removed at random and placed in order (so there is a color then a shape then a material). The remaining 24 cards are shuffled together and 8 cards are dealt to each player. Players now have incomplete and uncertain information- even if I hold 2 blue cards in my hand, the removed card might be blue. I can be certain it's not blue if I hold 3 blue cards, but that doesn't help me figure whether to bet on red or green.

Players share information somehow. How can be worked out later.

Players start off with, say, 6 tokens. After a set amount on information sharing, players must bet at least 1, but up to as many as they have, tokens on what the color card may be. The amount of the bid is not secret, but the color selected is (and they can bid on as many colors as they would like). A correct bet is doubled. Then there is another information-sharing phase, then the players bet on what shape was pulled out. Another information-sharing phase, then the players bet on what material was pulled out.

I think this would work best with fewer information-sharing rounds but high-quality information.

[edit] Note that this doesn't really deal with the Bayesian issue of integrating new and old information, unless the information-sharing is built that way. It should be something better than just showing people cards.

[2023 edit]: A better game than my suggestion here is Figgie.

There's definitely an idea here for an enjoyable, playable game. I've had a go at fleshing out the rules, but not got anything entirely to my satisfaction, so instead I'll list what I consider to be some important design questions.

The first is whether or not the murderer should know who they are. If they do, there's a risk that the game turns into Mafia, with an emphasis on dealing with deception rather than assessing evidence. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to be aware of. If not, or if the murderer is not a player character, then some sort of time pressure needs to be introduced to force the kind of trade-offs you wanted to see.

Under what circumstances are players allowed to ask each other questions, and is this done in public or in private? With a cooperative game there would seem to be little point in keeping secrets, but with a rogue murderer opportunities for misdirection would add useful complexity.

There's a risk that the randomisation aspect become sufficiently complicated that it would really need to be done by computer, but a game that could be played by people sitting around a table would be much more useful, and enjoyable.

This could be a fun and educational game. Possibly even commerically exploitable.

I'd love to play this game. It looks awesome and will likely lead to either learning or hilarity.

I think the lie detector schema is overly complicated, but that may be because I don't have access to the stress/no stress table. If the table is non-random, and the questioner can see the d10, it should be okay.

Also, what exactly is the win condition? Figuring out who done it and handing them over to the cops? That plus knowing which weapon and room?

I'd like to play it. This could work by email, turn-based. All players could move simultaneously on each turn.

I clicked on the title of this post expecting that you had made some sort of rationalism-specific clue-by-four, and had pictures.

This is pretty cool too, though. :-)

Activating the security cameras does not, in and of itself, prevent further murders. It's a deterrent, not a shield.

If that's how you want to play it, I'd recommend having a game mechanic for assaulting another player's character with one of the murder weapons, which forces them into cryostasis or uploading. Cryostasis is, from an out-of-game perspective, "Screw you guys, this sucks, I'm gonna go do something else." Uploading means you can continue to play, in a robotic telepresence body, but (due to the inadequately-secured wireless signal) can no longer keep secrets, and possibly have other restrictions.

The security system, having been put on alert, cannot be quickly and non-destructively shut down without a set of codes that Mr. Boddy was clever enough to not keep written down on-site. It is possible, however, to spend a turn's action functionally disabling the surveillance in a given room, either by taping opaque obstructions over lenses (which can be easily reversed by anyone else in the room) or by destroying the cameras outright. Either is enormously suspicious, there's a chance you missed one, and you have to be in the room in question to even make an attempt. Alternatively, from the security system's control room, it's possible to recalibrate a given room's cameras into uselessness: pivot them to face walls, turn up the gain to record only whiteout, etc. This is always impermanent, but makes it safer to break the cameras. From the control room, it's possible to review recordings (look at the notes other players have secretly exchanged) but not destroy them, since there's an off-site backup.

It would make sense for at least one person to sincerely remember being the murderer. That's strong evidence, but far from perfect. If a person who remembers actually is the murderer, their memories of how it happened and where are also useful. Everybody knows what they remember, nobody knows The Truth... until it's over.

It's the same basic genre as Mafia or Diplomacy. Might as well admit it and learn from what came before.

I think the tricky Bayesian-specific part would be the probability estimates. What about giving everyone chips, like for roulette? Start with a pile, expend them on certain in-game actions. When the game ends, if there's a spot that turns out to be true but you didn't put any chips on, you lose outright, but the highest possible score is to have exactly one chip on each correct answer and none on any others, regardless of how many you spent, representing peoples' willingness to put up with annoying behavior from someone who turns out to be an oracle.

Instead of making one guess, each player submits a probability distribution and the one with the best log score wins.