Threads – The Ultimate Forum Strategy Game

General
1

Threads – The Ultimate Forum Strategy Game

Players: 6
Estimated Learning Curve: Very High
Objective: Be the first to achieve Dominion Victory by producing Threads of Power while managing Units, Influence, Wealth, Knowledge, and Sectors.

1. Player Sign-Up

Post below to claim your player slot. Maximum 6 players.

Player Status
1. Open
2. Open
3. Open
4. Open
5. Open
6. Open

After all players sign up, the GM will assign starting resources and Sectors.

2. Starting Setup

Each player starts with the following resources:

Resource Starting Value Notes
Units 5 Used for conflicts, deploying to Sectors, or activating certain cards
Influence 2 Determines political leverage and card efficiency
Wealth 3 Used to pay maintenance, bribe, or buy cards
Knowledge 2 Unlocks advanced cards and special actions
Threads of Power 0 The ultimate resource; used to score Dominion Victory

Sectors: Each player begins with 2 Sectors.

  • Sectors produce resources based on Units and cards played.

  • Sectors can be contested or temporarily blocked by opponents.

  • GM will provide a starting Sector table.

3. Turn Structure

Each turn consists of 6 phases. All phases are mandatory and resolved by the GM. Players submit their moves via private message to the GM.

Phase 1: Resource Phase

  • Units and Sectors produce resources.

  • Formula for Threads of Power production:

Threads Produced = floor((Units × Knowledge) ÷ Influence) + Sector Bonuses
  • Players may redistribute Units among their Sectors.

Phase 2: Card Draw Phase

  • Each player draws 3 cards per turn.

  • Card categories:

    1. Military (affects Units & Influence)

    2. Political (affects Influence & Threads)

    3. Economic (affects Wealth & Units)

    4. Scholarly (affects Knowledge & Threads)

    5. Special / Mixed (interacts with multiple resources)

  • Cards may have activation conditions (e.g., Units ≥ 3, Influence ≥ 2).

Phase 3: Action Phase

Players submit all actions in secret:

  • Deploy Units to Sectors

  • Play cards

  • Form alliances or sabotage others

  • Trade resources (Wealth, Influence, Units, Knowledge)

  • Research Threads (spend Knowledge + Units + Influence)

Important: Actions may interact with other players’ actions in complex ways.

Phase 4: Conflict Phase

  • Conflicts over Sectors or resources are resolved using the following formula:
Conflict Strength = Units + Influence + Wealth Modifier ± Card Modifiers ± Alliance Bonuses

  • The player with higher Conflict Strength wins.

  • Loser loses Units, Influence, or other resources as dictated by the GM.

Phase 5: Thread Generation Phase

  • Calculate Threads of Power:
Threads = floor((Units × Knowledge) ÷ Influence) + Sector & Card Bonuses

  • Alliances or sabotage can modify the outcome.

  • Threads are tracked individually per player.

Phase 6: Maintenance Phase

  • Pay upkeep: Units cost 1 Wealth per 2 Units.

  • Knowledge decays: Lose 1 Knowledge per turn unless protected by a card.

  • Discard cards beyond hand limit (maximum hand size = 5).

  • Check for elimination: Players with Units ≤ 0 or Wealth ≤ 0 must skip their next turn.

4. Alliances & Diplomacy

  • Alliances are formal contracts between 2+ players.

  • Alliance benefits: resource sharing, combined Threads, protection from attacks.

  • Conditional rules:

    • Breaking an alliance triggers delayed penalties (loss of Influence, Knowledge, or Threads next turn).

    • Certain cards can modify alliances (strengthen, sabotage, or nullify).

5. Victory Conditions

Dominion Victory:

  • Obtain 10+ Threads of Power, AND

  • Control at least 50% of your Sectors, AND

  • Have Influence ≥ 50% of the current leader

Alternate Victory Paths (Optional):

  • Military Dominance: Units ≥ total Units of all opponents

  • Economic Supremacy: Wealth ≥ 2× any opponent

  • Knowledge Ascendance: Knowledge ≥ total Units

All victory paths require careful multi-resource planning.

6. Resource Interactions (Advanced)

Interaction Notes
Units × Knowledge → Threads Core mechanic for long-term strategy
Influence × Cards → Modifiers Cards’ effects depend on Influence
Wealth → Card Draw / Maintenance Insufficient Wealth reduces card draws or causes decay
Sectors → Resource Production Each Sector has unique production depending on Units + Cards
Alliances → Thread Multipliers Threads produced may be boosted by allied Sectors and resource sharing

7. Card Mechanics

Card Categories & Effects:

Category Effect Example
Military “Deploy 2 Units to any Sector; gain +1 Influence if you already have ≥3 Units there”
Political “Convert 2 Units into 1 Influence; opponents lose 1 Threads if Units < 3”
Economic “Spend 2 Wealth to gain 3 Units or 2 Influence”
Scholarly “Research Threads: Spend 1 Knowledge + 2 Units → gain Threads”
Special “Double the effect of any card played this turn; discard 1 card”

  • Activation conditions: Cards only function if prerequisites are met.

  • Interactions: Some cards enhance or nullify others.

9. Posting Rules

  • Players must submit all actions to the GM via private message.

  • GM will post turn resolution with updated tables for Units, Influence, Wealth, Knowledge, Threads, and Sectors.

  • Turn frequency: Every 2 days.

10. Starting Tables (Example)

Player Units Influence Wealth Knowledge Threads
Ironstove 5 2 3 2 0
Insom 5 2 3 2 0
SOPHIE 5 2 3 2 0
Dave 5 2 3 2 0
Eve 5 2 3 2 0
Frank 5 2 3 2 0

Sector Table Example:

Sector Player Units Wealth Produced Knowledge Produced
S1 Alice 3 2 1
S2 Alice 2 1 1
S3 Bob 3 1 2
S4 Bob 2 1 1

Once all slots are filled, I will assign starting Sectors and deal your first set of cards.

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All cards have been created and will be revealed in the game thread.

Also I used AI to help write the thread but I came up with all the rules myself using, believe it or not, Risk as the basis.

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@mafiabot host

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@mafiabot slist

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Signed Players

Sign the Fuck up you cucks

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@mafiabot sign

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Yea I have used AI to make slop too

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The actual rules were made by me and I can prove it if needed, I’m just not writing an entire thesis statement on the math behind them.

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Everyone around me says they wanna die, it's stealing my thunder. I had a friend recently say I should follow through with my desire to die already because it's been years and they're honestly fatigued, now I don't think I want to anymore now that people are expecting it while others might even accuse me of being a copycat too. I'm getting some real Julian Po vibes from myself rn.

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Anybody that says you should die isn’t a friend.

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Just because you haven’t found purpose doesn’t mean you never will.

Just because you haven’t solved everything now doesn’t mean you’re not on the journey.

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And whatever you’re feeling now will only build resilience for more difficult trials in the future. Pain is the torn muscle-fiber of the brain. It’s essential for getting stronger.

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Yes and no. You have a friend listening and trying to help for almost a decade, it's natural for fatigue to build up and an outburst to happen out of frustration especially if you are not following their advice and dismissing their opinions about your problems like substance abuse but still complaining constantly about feeling miserable. We're human, it doesn't make sense to hold people to this high standard you probably can't maintain yourself either.

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This is partially true. If you got your leg blown off in a war or had shrapnel embedded into your joints, walking might cause you extreme pain and just gritting your teeth and going thru that pain constantly withnno improvement doesn't make you stronger, it eventually just breaks you knowing there's no end to it and your entire life will just be living with that pain that medicine/doctors cannot fix and it mentally wears you down and changes your perspective and outlook. That's pain that doesn't make you stronger at all in my opinion.

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“pain that medicine cannot fix”

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There’s always medicine you can take for depression. If you haven’t even tried SSRI’s then why give up? If you’re going to kill yourself then you might as well just get a script for Lexapro because without it, life really isn’t worth much.

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Just to emphasize, ‘without it, life really isn’t worth much’ is referring to happiness, not Lexapro. Obviously natural brain harmony is the goal of any able-bodied person but in modern times it simply isn’t possible.

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Did this use an AI to be generated.

Still dope!

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Yeah, and honestly I might redo it.

It’s a work in progress, if people don’t sign then I’ll try again.

It’s not some elaborate joke though this sign-up might be too complicated. With AI however, I was thinking how we could use it for hosting games and I realized that we now have the potential to host more complicated ‘night actions’ so to speak as you can build a custom chat agent, with hardset rules, to calculate particularly complicated night actions.

I am working on a game, not this one, a mixture of risk and poker. Basically players get random cards which are hidden and there’s a game board where players fight over territories. Alliances can be brokered, there’s a political goodwill system if someone says they will attack/not attack and then does the opposite. But this stuff was always too hard to host because it involved too much time on the host’s part to calculate the timing of all the actions.

Not anymore. People send you the night actions and you feed it all into AI which will calculate everything perfectly. My plan is to move on from Mafia, I might shelf this game but the goal is a mixture of Risk and Poker and I’m hoping to start a new trend with it. Let me know if this interests you or you have any insight.

1 Like
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When I say calculate night actions: let’s say we are doing risk and we have different players using different cards (I will make new cards) and attacking different territories: this is too much work for hte host to do. However, you can set up preset instructions into a language model of your choice and basically just copy and paste every night action in and calculate it. There is a lot of potential now for better games than mafia and after ten years of playing it, I think the forum might appreciate what I’m working on.

My original plan was to steal another forum game but, after a significant amount of time invested into research, I can concur that mafia is effectively the only forum game in existence, not joking, bar dungeons and dragons campaigns.

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