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[Deleted member 231381]

SO

SO

SO

Friends, Romans, countrymen, etc. We have finished Gaf Mafia Season 2, and a genuinely huge congratulations to Karkador and MattyG for how well they did. Friends were made. Enemies were made. Friends were killed, often painfully. Nevertheless, we now have a duty to raise the next generation in our somewhat morbid ways. That leaves me three main tasks.

Firstly, I have to sort out who will be our next generation of moderators. I've set up a very simple application sheet that I'd like people who would like to mod a game to fill out and send to me. This is it:

Number of player slots for the game: I need to know this so I can determine how many players we need to recruit.
People who have been told about, consulted, or hinted information about your set-up: I need to know this because obviously these people can't play in your game.
Theme: Just so I know what the source material is. This is only minorly important, but if I feel the source material is significantly obscure, I may have to turn it down.
Do not include any more specific details than the above, because otherwise (obviously) I can't play your game then.

My guesstimation is that we will probably need around 3-4 new moderators. Either one or both of Karkador or MattyG, depending on their preferences, will fill in my role this game of overseeing set-up design without actually running a set. I'd genuinely like as many people as possible to send in applications; even if you don't do it this round, I'd like to know the state of interest in modding the game. I'll then pick our next batch of moderators based on a number of super secret Crab criteria (I'm really just looking for enthusiasm, but I'll also look favourably on people who played well in the last 2 seasons because if you play well it means you have a good understanding of the game and that helps designing set-ups).

Secondly, we need to sort out a new recruitment thread. I have asked the GAF moderation team if we are allowed to run our recruitment thread in OT rather than Community. They said yes, only as long as games aren't actually running, then it gets moved. This gives us a great opportunity for outreach, so I want to do as well as possible with that. So...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=953137

This is our recruitment thread/explanation thread so far. It's clearly done reasonably well or we wouldn't all be here, but I now have a pool of about 40 people willing to give advice to improve, including many new players who probably have a lot to say about what brought them in. As such, I want a discussion of:

What should the thread title be? A good thread title makes people click.
What content should be in the first post? How should it be prioritized? Is there any information that should be dropped as unnecessary or added because it is missing?

Some things I have considered is writing a small section on moderating games and how to apply to moderate a game in the future, plus how moderating works (i.e., you mod a game then tutor the next set of mods).

Thirdly, various miscellania. What did you think went best about Season 2? Is there anything you felt was missing or would change? Some people have expressed a desire to chose between games. I'm not necessarily particularly keen on that for reasons I expressed in the Dead Thread, but I am open to discussion on it. There are probably other minor things other people might have noticed as well that they think could be improved, added, or subtracted. Please don't hesitate to speak.

I imagine this will be open for around a week, just to give everyone time to have their input, then we can start the recruitment thread for Season 3.

So, in memory of a gaming great, please drop the bomb.

 

[Palmer_v1]

An intro to Archer, for the non-Arche:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLWrKh2fB0

Edit: Oh you want feedback. I'll edit that back in shortly rather than immediately derailing this with Archer videos.

 

[Ourobolus]

I'll answer the rest later, but for now...

Number of player slots for the game: 24

People who have been told about, consulted, or hinted information about your set-up: Launchpad, traube, Karkador, and maybe MattyG if he ever looked at it.

Theme: Archer

 

[CzarTim]

new thread hype

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

Number of player slots for the game: 21

People who have been told about, consulted, or hinted information about your set-up: Karkador, Ourobolous

Theme: Danganronpa

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Okay, just going to make this a new rule now and will edit into the OT.

If you want to moderate a game, please do not discuss the details with anyone except Karkador or MattyG (or in future seasons, whoever the tutor moderators are). If you've already spilled the beans with someone else, that's fine, you can continue with them, but otherwise it can become a tactical way to end up in a particular game by ruling yourself out of others. Obviously none of you would do that, but I think it's a fairly bad precedent to set.

Also, thing two is really the most important one on that list. If there's one of us who is really good at OT design, feedback would be really appreciated. :3

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

I like the composition of the last recruitment thread. The title got my attention and everything was straightforward. That's just my feedback on that.

Nothing meaningful is coming to mind otherwise. I may expand on other ideas as they are posted, but otherwise I've got nothing.

Okay, just going to make this a new rule now and will edit into the OT.

If you want to moderate a game, please do not discuss the details with anyone except Karkador or MattyG (or in future seasons, whoever the tutor moderators are). If you've already spilled the beans with someone else, that's fine, you can continue with them, but otherwise it can become a tactical way to end up in a particular game by ruling yourself out of others. Obviously none of you would do that, but I think it's a fairly bad precedent to set.

Ouro has really been a shameless whore about this.

 

[nin1000]

I think I will try to host a game in season 4, I have some ideas but want to flesh them out some more over the next couple of months.

 

[Ourobolus]

I'm just excited. If it's not picked that's fine

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I'm just excited. If it's not picked that's fine

Don't worry, between you, Launchpad, and traube I think we have 3 moderators and I haven't seen any other volunteers for this round, but I just want to make sure, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if we hit around the 100 players need for 4 games anyway so we may even need one more. I'm just making sure I've not missed anyone and everyone has a fair shot. :3

 

[Ourobolus]

No worries

 

[CzarTim]

Thirdly, various miscellania. What did you think went best about Season 2? Is there anything you felt was missing or would change? Some people have expressed a desire to chose between games. I'm not necessarily particularly keen on that for reasons I expressed in the Dead Thread, but I am open to discussion on it. There are probably other minor things other people might have noticed as well that they think could be improved, added, or subtracted. Please don't hesitate to speak.

- Make sure ordinary town role pm or and/or town win condition is in the the OP of new games.
- List the traditional role name in the role PM where applicable along with the flavor name so newer players have a frame of reference. (i.e. Motion Detector)
- Offer dead thread link to those reading new games but not participating so they can discuss if they want.
- Possibly some sort of minimum post count requirement. No alive player should have less posts than the moderator after day three.

tbh I wouldn't mind getting to choose the game I'm in, but I don't care that much either way.

 

[Barrylocke]

The one thing I worry about with this stuff is where other players will get pulled from as backup if people start bailing. Especially as you get to high numbers with newer players who may not expect the time commitment or run into real life concerns. Not trying to be a downer, but it is something to keep in mind.

 

[RetroMG]

For those who haven't played Danganronpa, you should. If you can't, here's a "Let's Dub" where someone plays the game and gets a bunch of people to voice the characters.

The premise is this: A group of high school kids, (each with a special "Super-duper high school level" talent or ability) are locked in a school, and told by a cute mascot character to kill one another. If one student manages to kill one another, the remaining students are given time to investigate the murder, then a class trial is held. If the students are able to determine who the murderer is, then the murderer is executed. If not, then the murderer is set free, and everyone else is executed.

EDIT: Hey, Crab, I said I was going to play this season, but if we have too many players and not enough games, let me know and I'll run my game.

 

[CzarTim]

The one thing I worry about with this stuff is where other players will get pulled from as backup if people start bailing. Especially as you get to high numbers with newer players who may not expect the time commitment or run into real life concerns. Not trying to be a downer, but it is something to keep in mind.

I don't mind playing two games at once, personally. But I think we should make it abundantly clear in the new OT that it's a huge time commitment and can also be very stressful. Also ask people to ask for a replacement rather than just bailing. People needing to replace out is fine, but leaving without warning is lame.

 

[Rest]

I'm interested in the next game.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I'm interested in the next game.

:3

 

[Kalor]

SO
Thirdly, various miscellania. What did you think went best about Season 2? Is there anything you felt was missing or would change? Some people have expressed a desire to chose between games. I'm not necessarily particularly keen on that for reasons I expressed in the Dead Thread, but I am open to discussion on it. There are probably other minor things other people might have noticed as well that they think could be improved, added, or subtracted. Please don't hesitate to speak.

The main thing is to do with inactive players. We had quite a few people who went inactive and never showed up again so we need some way to limit this since it could be disruptive to the game. As CzarTim said, making people aware of the time commitment might lower the amount of inactive people.

I've been toying with a Zero Escape theme but I'll need some time to work on it, all I have is ideas right now. Maybe season 4/5.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Firstly, I have to sort out who will be our next generation of moderators. I've set up a very simple application sheet that I'd like people who would like to mod a game to fill out and send to me. This is it:

Number of player slots for the game: I need to know this so I can determine how many players we need to recruit.
People who have been told about, consulted, or hinted information about your set-up: I need to know this because obviously these people can't play in your game.
Theme: Just so I know what the source material is. This is only minorly important, but if I feel the source material is significantly obscure, I may have to turn it down.
Do not include any more specific details than the above, because otherwise (obviously) I can't play your game then.

I'd be entirely capable of creating a game, but since so many people seem to want to, I'm happy to just keep playing instead. If I ever do moderate, it will most likely be Werewolf style, themed or not.

An aside for the people hosting, please don't start with role madness or bastard games yet. We really need to play more normal games until everyone has a better grasp of some of the core concepts. You shouldn't NEED power roles to win. Also, don't go crazy making up new roles or changing pre-existing ones. It would be nice if we could link new players to one specific wiki with the knowledge that it encompasses all possibilities.

Secondly, we need to sort out a new recruitment thread. I have asked the GAF moderation team if we are allowed to run our recruitment thread in OT rather than Community. They said yes, only as long as games aren't actually running, then it gets moved. This gives us a great opportunity for outreach, so I want to do as well as possible with that. So...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=953137

This is our recruitment thread/explanation thread so far. It's clearly done reasonably well or we wouldn't all be here, but I now have a pool of about 40 people willing to give advice to improve, including many new players who probably have a lot to say about what brought them in. As such, I want a discussion of:

What should the thread title be? A good thread title makes people click.
What content should be in the first post? How should it be prioritized? Is there any information that should be dropped as unnecessary or added because it is missing?

Some things I have considered is writing a small section on moderating games and how to apply to moderate a game in the future, plus how moderating works (i.e., you mod a game then tutor the next set of mods).

I don't have any immediate suggestions for thread title. I liked the current one just fine. It partly depends on if we're creating a NEW recruitment thread each time, or having a mod move the same one back and forth as needed.

OP should probably have an explanation of what Mafia/Werewolf is, how it changes in forum setting vs IRL play. Set expectations on the time commitment involved.. Include links to previous games, and maybe a sort of highlight reel from each game? Of course, all of the rules(with some possible additions?) need to be there, along with an up to date waiting list.

Thirdly, various miscellania. What did you think went best about Season 2? Is there anything you felt was missing or would change? Some people have expressed a desire to chose between games. I'm not necessarily particularly keen on that for reasons I expressed in the Dead Thread, but I am open to discussion on it. There are probably other minor things other people might have noticed as well that they think could be improved, added, or subtracted. Please don't hesitate to speak.

I imagine this will be open for around a week, just to give everyone time to have their input, then we can start the recruitment thread for Season 3.

So, in memory of a gaming great, please drop the bomb.

I think I'll post more about this part specifically in a bit.

 

[ultron87]

I guess in terms of feedback the one thing I'd say is that I'd prefer setups where there was less opportunities or encouragement to metagame the creator. Thinking "what was the mod thinking when designing the game" isn't a particularly interesting game to me. I'd much rather be playing against the actual players in the game. Since closed setup appears to be the way we're going there's always going to be some of that in terms role selection and things like number of mafia, but the Animal Crossing game ended up emphasizing that with the visible map, neighbor system and the revelation that it wasn't randomly constructed in terms of role placement.

Also, please no jesters. Or, if you must have one, it shouldn't be a secret.

 

[Barrylocke]

I guess in terms of feedback the one thing I'd say is that I'd prefer setups where there was less opportunities or encouragement to metagame the creator. Thinking "what was the mod thinking when designing the game" isn't a particularly interesting game to me. I'd much rather be playing against the actual players in the game. Since closed setup appears to be the way we're going there's always going to be some of that in terms role selection and things like number of mafia, but the Animal Crossing game ended up emphasizing that with the visible map, neighbor system and the revelation that it wasn't randomly constructed in terms of role placement.

Also, please no jesters. Or, if you must have one, it shouldn't be a secret.

Burn all jesters.

 

[RetroMG]

In a typical non-role-madness game, how many roles should there be to the number of players?

I'm writing up the thoughts I've had for my GF game, and I've got about half the town players having roles so far. (Although some of them are non-roles, like the Masons, where two players just start the game knowing that the other is town.)

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

For those who haven't played Danganronpa, you should. If you can't, here's a "Let's Dub" where someone plays the game and gets a bunch of people to voice the characters.

The premise is this: A group of high school kids, (each with a special "Super-duper high school level" talent or ability) are locked in a school, and told by a cute mascot character to kill one another. If one student manages to kill one another, the remaining students are given time to investigate the murder, then a class trial is held. If the students are able to determine who the murderer is, then the murderer is executed. If not, then the murderer is set free, and everyone else is executed.

EDIT: Hey, Crab, I said I was going to play this season, but if we have too many players and not enough games, let me know and I'll run my game.

I've designed my game so you only really have to know who Monokuma and what the general atmosphere of the games are. I've thrown in a bunch of allusions to both mainline games, but most would be missed by people who haven't played both games; by the same token, it wouldn't spoil anything major from either game if people want to go play it afterwards.

I guess in terms of feedback the one thing I'd say is that I'd prefer setups where there was less opportunities or encouragement to metagame the creator. Thinking "what was the mod thinking when designing the game" isn't a particularly interesting game to me. I'd much rather be playing against the actual players in the game. Since closed setup appears to be the way we're going there's always going to be some of that in terms role selection and things like number of mafia, but the Animal Crossing game ended up emphasizing that with the visible map, neighbor system and the revelation that it wasn't randomly constructed in terms of role placement.

Also, please no jesters. Or, if you must have one, it shouldn't be a secret.

This was something that Kark brought up with me in a loose way and I agree with.

Also, no jesters.

 

[RetroMG]

I've designed my game so you only really have to know who Monokuma and what the general atmosphere of the games are. I've thrown in a bunch of allusions to both mainline games, but most would be missed by people who haven't played both games; by the same token, it wouldn't spoil anything major from either game if people want to go play it afterwards.

Cool. Didn't mean to step on your toes. I love the series and want more people to appreciate it.

 

[Barrylocke]

I've designed my game so you only really have to know who Monokuma and what the general atmosphere of the games are. I've thrown in a bunch of allusions to both mainline games, but most would be missed by people who haven't played both games; by the same token, it wouldn't spoil anything major from either game if people want to go play it afterwards.



This was something that Kark brought up with me in a loose way and I agree with.

Also, no jesters.

I appreciate that this and the SW Mafia were like this. One of the biggest reason I'm hesitant with themed games is because there's often limited numbers of characters that can appear and that makes you get meta (Someone can claim to be some fairly obscure character, say Shmi Skywalker, and people may call BS because why would Anakin's mother show up in a game of 25ish people when there's more important characters to use). Alluding to and using themes from a source, without outright having most of the characters be from that source, makes the idea of theme'd games MUCH more palatable to me.

 

[Ourobolus]

The main thing is to do with inactive players. We had quite a few people who went inactive and never showed up again so we need some way to limit this since it could be disruptive to the game. As CzarTim said, making people aware of the time commitment might lower the amount of inactive people.

This is my main concern (apart from Kark totally blowing the Light Sleeper role <3 ).

Inactives, for the most part, are typically town. It provides less of an incentive to lynch them during the day phase, so Mafia is at a disadvantage there. Sure, I think we did pretty well considering, but I think if we hadn't had 3 replacements (plus a double-replacement), town would have had to think hard about evicting squidy and Ezekel.

I'm up for alerting them to the time commitment, but I may also consider mod-killing as an option to dissuade people jumping ship.

I appreciate that this and the SW Mafia were like this. One of the biggest reason I'm hesitant with themed games is because there's often limited numbers of characters that can appear and that makes you get meta (Someone can claim to be some fairly obscure character, say Shmi Skywalker, and people may call BS because why would Anakin's mother show up in a game of 25ish people when there's more important characters to use). Alluding to and using themes from a source, without outright having most of the characters be from that source, makes the idea of theme'd games MUCH more palatable to me.

I considered this, and designed my roles so that unless someone comes clean and explicitly states their role, they shouldn't be able to figure it out. But, the roles are somewhat thematically correct.

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

Cool. Didn't mean to step on your toes. I love the series and want more people to appreciate it.

No, by all means, post whatever you want about it. I just don't want to shut off players by making it heavy on references and whatnot, or make it necessary for people to go and watch Let's Plays or actually play the games. I wanted to point that out for anyone looking at the video you posted.

I appreciate that this and the SW Mafia were like this. One of the biggest reason I'm hesitant with themed games is because there's often limited numbers of characters that can appear and that makes you get meta (Someone can claim to be some fairly obscure character, say Shmi Skywalker, and people may call BS because why would Anakin's mother show up in a game of 25ish people when there's more important characters to use). Alluding to and using themes from a source, without outright having most of the characters be from that source, makes the idea of theme'd games MUCH more palatable to me.

Definitely not using character names in mine. Some of the roles are definitely references to characters in the games, but some would be far too spoilery if I were to put a name next to the role.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

In a typical non-role-madness game, how many roles should there be to the number of players?

Between half to a third, but most of those should be minor roles that don't have much influence. Genuinely powerful roles should be no more than 2-3 for town, and if you go with 3 for example, you need to give mafia quite powerful roles as a response.

EDIT: Sorry, that's "about a half to a third of town" should have power roles, not a half to a third of all the players.

If you're curious about the number of mafia you need, this is quite a good app:

http://games-net.de/hosted/tggc/trash/mafiacalc.php

Obviously this is an art rather than a science because you have to guesstimate how much influence power roles have, but it's a good start. In my opinion, it's harder to be a good mafia than it is a good town, so for fledgling communities like ours where lots of players are inexperienced, you're looking at a "Votechance" of around 15-20%. Later on you might want to lower that a bit, to ~5% when everyone is very experienced (not for a while yet).

For technical reasons, you want the town to actually have sub-50% odds (can explain why if anyone wants), but to be as close to 50% as you can get - e.g., a town win-rate of 45% is basically perfect balance.

As a side note, 24 is actually a really awkward number to work with; we only ended up with 24 this time because that's how many players we recruited, I'm not sure if it should be seen as the standard. Odd-numbered multiples of three tend to work well (I have no idea why this is the case, I assume there's some maths behind it but I can't be bothered to work it out). It's not that important in the grand scheme of things as you can balance around it, but just a note.

 

[Matt Attack]

This is a small thing, but if we link to games from previous seasons in the first post, maybe consider not spoiling which faction won the game (at least, not outside of spoiler tags). This is just out of consideration for anybody who wants to read previous games blind (as some of us may have done for the original GAF Mafia game).

 

[CzarTim]

. Odd-numbered multiples of three tend to work well (I have no idea why this is the case, I assume there's some maths behind it but I can't be bothered to work it out). It's not that important in the grand scheme of things as you can balance around it, but just a note.

I believe it's so the game will end on a mislynch rather than nk.

 

[CornBurrito]

I'm interested in the next game.

I am as well. Dunno if this stuff is new player friendly though.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I believe it's so the game will end on a mislynch rather than nk.

That would be true if the game had no extra killing roles/protects, but in all our GAF games so far, the number of kills per night is inconsistent.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I am as well. Dunno if this stuff is new player friendly though.

I think the vast majority of our player-base were totally new to forum mafia, so I'm pretty sure it is. This thread might be a bit technical as we discuss setups and so on, but that's not relevant to someone who just wants to play for the first time rather than moderate; then it's pretty easy - I'm sure the others will attest to that.

 

[Ourobolus]

I am as well. Dunno if this stuff is new player friendly though.

You'll be fine. I've seen your posts, you're a fantastic liar.

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

You'll be fine. I've seen your posts, you're a fantastic liar.

 

[Karkador]

I guess in terms of feedback the one thing I'd say is that I'd prefer setups where there was less opportunities or encouragement to metagame the creator. Thinking "what was the mod thinking when designing the game" isn't a particularly interesting game to me. I'd much rather be playing against the actual players in the game. Since closed setup appears to be the way we're going there's always going to be some of that in terms role selection and things like number of mafia, but the Animal Crossing game ended up emphasizing that with the visible map, neighbor system and the revelation that it wasn't randomly constructed in terms of role placement.

Also, please no jesters. Or, if you must have one, it shouldn't be a secret.

This was something that bugged me about my game, too. It felt like people were projecting egoism on me, when all I really intended was for the game to have a stronger sense of logic that you could visually see. I guess it's because I think about things in visual ways, so I wanted the game to have "a board", so to speak. Honestly, with the town grid, I was wondering if I somehow inadvertently created a sudoku puzzle that someone was going to quickly solve.

FWIW, there was a little bit of "would Crab have done this?" in the first mafia game, though it was understandably higher in mine.

I wrote about this in the dead thread, too. I felt that I needed to establish that the placement of things wasn't random - even though it was more of a mix of randomness and things by design. I'm not sure if it would have been better to not have confirmed it one way or another.

 

[Haly]

Crab is a wanker.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

The main thing is to do with inactive players. We had quite a few people who went inactive and never showed up again so we need some way to limit this since it could be disruptive to the game. As CzarTim said, making people aware of the time commitment might lower the amount of inactive people.

Agreed. I'll stress the time commitment more.

An aside for the people hosting, please don't start with role madness or bastard games yet. We really need to play more normal games until everyone has a better grasp of some of the core concepts. You shouldn't NEED power roles to win. Also, don't go crazy making up new roles or changing pre-existing ones. It would be nice if we could link new players to one specific wiki with the knowledge that it encompasses all possibilities.

I agree completely. It's still important we keep roles simple. Making new roles is fine as long as they're clear and immediately understandable, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with using the staple roles - they're staple for a reason.

OP should probably have an explanation of what Mafia/Werewolf is, how it changes in forum setting vs IRL play. Set expectations on the time commitment involved.. Include links to previous games, and maybe a sort of highlight reel from each game? Of course, all of the rules(with some possible additions?) need to be there, along with an up to date waiting list.

Agreed.

I guess in terms of feedback the one thing I'd say is that I'd prefer setups where there was less opportunities or encouragement to metagame the creator. Thinking "what was the mod thinking when designing the game" isn't a particularly interesting game to me. I'd much rather be playing against the actual players in the game. Since closed setup appears to be the way we're going there's always going to be some of that in terms role selection and things like number of mafia, but the Animal Crossing game ended up emphasizing that with the visible map, neighbor system and the revelation that it wasn't randomly constructed in terms of role placement.

I'm mixed on this. I sort of agree and sort of don't agree. In hindsight, Karkador's set-up was very non-conventional, sufficiently different from the normal variation of mafia games you might see. In the future, I think if a potential moderator floated a set-up like that again, I'd make it opt-in, so you could choose to go for something that will probably be more normal or something that takes a new spin of established rules. I do, however, think that the AC game turned out really, really well and that there is room for games that focus on battling the moderator (this is a really important skill even in fairly normal mafia games), so I'm reluctant to outright rule them out.

Also, please no jesters. Or, if you must have one, it shouldn't be a secret.

Amen.

I appreciate that this and the SW Mafia were like this. One of the biggest reason I'm hesitant with themed games is because there's often limited numbers of characters that can appear and that makes you get meta (Someone can claim to be some fairly obscure character, say Shmi Skywalker, and people may call BS because why would Anakin's mother show up in a game of 25ish people when there's more important characters to use). Alluding to and using themes from a source, without outright having most of the characters be from that source, makes the idea of theme'd games MUCH more palatable to me.

Yes, I agree. I'm going to type up a post on set-up design based on what Karkador and MattyG asked me and a few extra musings I've pencilled down. This will be something I'll expound on in more detail later.

This is a small thing, but if we link to games from previous seasons in the first post, maybe consider not spoiling which faction won the game (at least, not outside of spoiler tags). This is just out of consideration for anybody who wants to read previous games blind (as some of us may have done for the original GAF Mafia game).

Good idea. Taken note.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I'm up for alerting them to the time commitment, but I may also consider mod-killing as an option to dissuade people jumping ship.

I think this is a bad idea. If people don't want to play, they don't want to play, and you can't really do anything about that. Mod-killing their role just punishes the rest of that player's team without actually dissuading them in any way.

I will put a blurb telling people that we don't mind you leaving if you don't have time, but it's just basic politeness to inform your moderator.

 

[Ourobolus]

I think this is a bad idea. If people don't want to play, they don't want to play, and you can't really do anything about that. Mod-killing their role just punishes the rest of that player's team without actually dissuading them in any way.

I will put a blurb telling people that we don't mind you leaving if you don't have time, but it's just basic politeness to inform your moderator.

I mean for those that just go straight inactive rather than alerting me.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Crab is a wanker.

KILL: Haly

I mean for those that just go straight inactive rather than alerting me.

What does that achieve? It doesn't make them come back, and it doesn't make the game run better than the alternative of finding a replacemennt because even if the replacement struggles a bit it's less bad for their team still than just outright killing a player-slot for a reason outside of everyone else's play.

 

[CzarTim]

I think this is a bad idea. If people don't want to play, they don't want to play, and you can't really do anything about that. Mod-killing their role just punishes the rest of that player's team without actually dissuading them in any way.

I will put a blurb telling people that we don't mind you leaving if you don't have time, but it's just basic politeness to inform your moderator.

After day three I'd prefer mod killing over replacements. Before that replacements are cool. It's less fair to need to get a read on a new player halfway through the game than it is to simply be -1. Alignment has nothing to do with it.

 

[Ourobolus]

Well the incentive is that you are hurting your team if you just up and disappear. I know people have life commitments, but a simple alert isn't terribly difficult to provide.

Also what CzarTim said. Early on I don't mind the idea.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

After day three I'd prefer mod killing over replacements. Before that replacements are cool. It's less fair to need to get a read on a new player halfway through the game than it is to simply be -1. Alignment has nothing to do with it.

I disagree, especially later in the game when subtracting a player entirely makes an enormous difference. Imagine how annoyed you'd have been if say, RNH had gone inactive on the penultimate AC day. The entirety of town would then have lost for a reason completely outside of their control and it would have made much of the game simply pointless. Yes, there are difficulties reading replacement players, but there are also benefits - if you found both preplacement and replacement suspicious, then that's extra evidence against them, for example.

Also, this is, at the end of the day, just an internet game. At the point people are willing to flake out without telling anybody, they (presumably) don't really care if their team wins or not, so mod-killing that role does nothing incentive-wise.

 

[RetroMG]

I had all these ideas that were amazing when they were rattling around in my head, but now that I'm putting them down on paper, they seem incredibly stupid.

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

So Ouro brought up that I should probably mention, my game will kind of be a role madness game. No ordinary roles. However, I've made sure to build in traps, consequences, and a general double-edged nature into all of them.

Kark hasn't looked extensively over it, but Ouro seems to agree it isn't too crazy.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

So Ouro brought up that I should probably mention, my game will kind of be a role madness game. No ordinary roles. However, I've made sure to build in traps, consequences, and a general double-edged nature into all of them.

Kark hasn't looked extensively over it, but Ouro seems to agree it isn't too crazy.

Okay, please make sure both Kark and MattyG look over it before you get too attached. I can't look myself, but I am rather wary about role madness games at this stage. That's not a no, but I'll feel more comfortable if I know both of them are okay with it.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Thirdly, various miscellania. What did you think went best about Season 2? Is there anything you felt was missing or would change? Some people have expressed a desire to chose between games. I'm not necessarily particularly keen on that for reasons I expressed in the Dead Thread, but I am open to discussion on it. There are probably other minor things other people might have noticed as well that they think could be improved, added, or subtracted. Please don't hesitate to speak.

I imagine this will be open for around a week, just to give everyone time to have their input, then we can start the recruitment thread for Season 3.

So, in memory of a gaming great, please drop the bomb.

Best part of Season 2:

It was more Mafia! I also liked the accelerated pace due to fewer players per game and shortened day phases. I liked that Karkador eventually shortened phases even more as the game got smaller. Both games ending so close together was nice as well. MattyG's fan fiction fluff was fun too. AC thread essentially being depraved child murderers was pretty great. Dead thread was also a great addition. I think it helps keep the community together and probably reduces turnover from game to game. There are potential downfalls which I'll go into below.

Season 2 Neutral/Bad/Rules things:

These are not game breaking issues or anything, but just stuff that came to me as we played, or afterwards. Rules consistency! A lot of us gave karkador crap about his majority math. I have no vested interest in how majority works, but I do think we should pick a way to do it and follow it in every game. Same goes for self voting; one game allowed it while the other disallowed it.

Can we just declare that we will never allow a Fool/Tanner role in our games?

Are email tags(only visible when quoting) acceptable? As a person that obviously loves to drop hints, I'm still personally opposed to hiding stuff in this way.

Can we codify whether or not people should be using your GAF activity against you? i.e. you check my account to see when I was last online. We don't have a rule against it(i think), but that screams bad sportsmanship to me.

Can we discuss what's acceptable in the context of quoting something from your role, or any PM in general? This might apply to quicktopic chats to some degree as well. For example, I made up a role claim but put it in quote tags in the same general format MattyG sent them. Were the quote tags bad? Copying his format? I'd prefer to know where the line is on this.

Related to that, MattyG forgot to add sample role PMs when our game started, which led to some minor issues. For the new Mods, please make sure you include those generic roles!

Also, MattyG and Crab were correct in making us play out our game even though it looked like it was essentially over. To some degree, speeding games up in any way can be a tell that there are not roles left that would require time for decisions or actions to be made.

Do we need to discuss what is allowed when voting has technically ended, but a moderator hasn't officially called the vote? How about the time between when the vote is finalized, but roles haven't been flipped? Also, in general, drive by ghosts seemed too frequent.

I'll post more about dead thread, replacement players, and some other minor rules things later. I have to head home!

 

[LaunchpadMcQ]

Okay, please make sure both Kark and MattyG look over it before you get too attached. I can't look myself, but I am rather wary about role madness games at this stage. That's not a no, but I'll feel more comfortable if I know both of them are okay with it.

Will do

 

[Deleted member 231381]

These are not game breaking issues or anything, but just stuff that came to me as we played, or afterwards. Rules consistency! A lot of us gave karkador crap about his majority math. I have no vested interest in how majority works, but I do think we should pick a way to do it and follow it in every game. Same goes for self voting; one game allowed it while the other disallowed it.

I agree. I didn't actually realize Karkador was doing this until late, or would have stopped it, but for fairness sake once it had started it needed to remain consistent for that game. I will be rewriting this rule to make clear it is indeed the way it happened in WDIOTL and Star Wars.

Can we just declare that we will never allow a Fool/Tanner role in our games?

I don't want to say never because someone might make clever use of it, but yes, I will point out that it will almost always be frowned upon.

Are email tags(only visible when quoting) acceptable? As a person that obviously loves to drop hints, I'm still personally opposed to hiding stuff in this way.

No, they shouldn't be acceptable. This is a pretty clear way to code secret communications by town roles that shouldn't have them.

Can we codify whether or not people should be using your GAF activity against you? i.e. you check my account to see when I was last online. We don't have a rule against it(i think), but that screams bad sportsmanship to me.

Yes, this is very poor sportsmanship and should almost certainly not be allowed.

Can we discuss what's acceptable in the context of quoting something from your role, or any PM in general? This might apply to quicktopic chats to some degree as well. For example, I made up a role claim but put it in quote tags in the same general format MattyG sent them. Were the quote tags bad? Copying his format? I'd prefer to know where the line is on this.

This one needs more discussion. I will talk with MattyG and Karkador about this.

Related to that, MattyG forgot to add sample role PMs when our game started, which led to some minor issues. For the new Mods, please make sure you include those generic roles!

This will be going in my "how to build a set-up" post.

Also, MattyG and Crab were correct in making us play out our game even though it looked like it was essentially over. To some degree, speeding games up in any way can be a tell that there are not roles left that would require time for decisions or actions to be made.

Yes. For this reason I am very wary about having days get progressively shorter as the game goes on. I'm not absolutely set on this, but I feel like if there is a particular time schedule (and I think 4:3 worked really well, close to perfect), it should not be changed at all.

Do we need to discuss what is allowed when voting has technically ended, but a moderator hasn't officially called the vote? How about the time between when the vote is finalized, but roles haven't been flipped? Also, in general, drive by ghosts seemed too frequent.

Hmm, I'm not sure. Do we need to discuss it? The only time it's been an issue was raindoc's slip-up, and that actually was stated in the rules already [thankfully didn't impact the result anyway].

RE: drive-by ghosting, yes, we do need to do something about that.