Hi guys,
With the few things being talked about in other threads, I thought it would be prudent to make a thread to explain a little bit about us as a community, and how we tend to do things. Firstly, we take things pretty seriously. I don't mean we're boring because we're not! But in terms of the game itself, we do take it seriously and are generally full of very competitive personalities. Our games can get pretty heated during, but we are also pretty good for keeping it in game and completely dropping it afterwards. We all get on well outside of games and understand that what happens on the battlefield stays there.
Rankings
We do like to employ a rankings system (resetting on a yearly basis) and will look to do so again here, but if you want to opt-out of being included in the table at all then that's completely fine. Below is the link to the spreadsheet I created, which I try (emphasis on try) to update after each game. Feel free to take a look to get a feel for how we handle it. You can also look at this for things like your overall win rate, and win rate as each alignment. I've currently kept the last year's data in there so you can get a feel for it in action:
1drv.ms
The point system is counted as follows:
+3 for Victory
+1 for Tie
+1 for Awards
+1 for Hosting
The term "awards" accounts for MVPs and honourable mentions (HMs). Each game as standard, we ask the host to award 1 MVP and give out 2 HMs. The host is free to only give out 1 or 0 HMs if they don't feel like these awards were earned, but no more than 2. We used to have MVPs counting for 2 points rather than 1, but this caused more trouble than it was worth! Especially with awards generally being so subjective, and decided by a lone person. So we felt a flat 1 point for an award is the most fair way to do it.
Should there be ties in the rankings, the following tiebreak rules are applied:
1st Tiebreak - Points Per Game (Worth noting that points for hosting are not counted towards this)
2nd Tiebreak - Total MVPs
3rd Tiebreak - Total HMs
4th Tiebreak - Total Victories
Hosting
After some issues in the past, we decided on running with a system whereby we count games as either RANKED or UNRANKED based on a certain set of criteria. This is mostly to keep all aspects of the community catered to. For players that take things seriously, we don't want to cause frustration at them putting lots of effort into a game that ended up being wildly unbalanced or perhaps even bastard, and thus have this game reflected in the rankings. That said, we also want anybody to be able to give hosting a go if they'd like, and also want to allow for more crazy and silly (or perhaps testing grounds for mechanics you might later wish to use in ranked games) games.
Now, this will probably need a bit of thinking of how to move forward. The way we did it is we compiled an "Approved Hosts" list. This list was filled with people that had experience, and a history of putting together games that have been received well by the community. The criteria for having a ranked game would be that the game was either created by somebody on this list, or had been checked over and approved by somebody on this list (with them providing tweaks in order to better balance it if needed). Of course, with this being a coming together of 2 communities and us being unfamiliar with each other, this might not be the best way to start off. I am open to suggestions on how best to implement this system going forward.
As a more general rule, here are some stuff that tends to be reacted negatively to or considered bastard in our standard:
- Lynchproof roles
- Roles that punish town for doing their jobs correctly (scum having vengeful perks where they can choose anyone on their wagon to kill, scum PGOs etc)
- Unlimited redirectors for mafia
- Roles that are created to simply misdirect town (such as roles that make up phony results with no logic behind them)
- Cops that are off sanity that do not get revealed upon death
- Things that are just generally impossible to account for as town (its hard to think of generic examples, but plucked from a real game: some dude had the town bodyguard get killed at night, and instantly resurrect as a second serial killer without us being aware of the death in the first place.... Though apparently the host did post GIFS in the day write up to give us hints lmao)
- Roles like bulletproofs or commuters being unlimited
I'm sure there are more stuff but its hard to think of them without seeing them in action. We are fine with hosts making bastard games, but they MUST be advertised as bastard in the sign up thread.
We tend to operate by majority lynch in general, with night posting, character claiming etc allowed... However we are fine with the host changing any of these standards as long as it is obviously explained in the sign up thread and again in the game OP. We do, in general, give the host autonomy over any of the standards. One thing I noticed that we do as standard that tends to completely deviate from everywhere else is flexible deadlines. Generally, we do not have phases start and end at set times. We have them be flexible. A hammer will end the day early for example. Also, assuming all night actions have been submitted, and everyone left alive has posted in the thread (if night posting is allowed) then we tend to end the night early rather than making it go to deadline. Obviously this becomes more pertinent as the game gets towards the end. The night phase before lylo etc has lasted less than an hour in the past.
Can't think of anything else you will need to know but please feel free to ask any questions, and of course everything here is open for feedback and improvement and debate etc and so forth!
One thing we do also need to discuss is how best to do out of game chats (namely mafia chat and dead chat). I know conversations is an option, but most don't really like this. We always used to use QuickTopic which is unfortunately dead. The options we have been considering of late are conversations, discord, or something that seems very similar to quicktopic that I've forgotten the name of! Discord seems the most well rounded option, but to be honest most of us dont really want an instant messenger service due to the simple fact that it encourages way more active/spammy chats. Mafia is a big enough time commitment as is! That said, we never really agreed on a solution so perhaps something we can discuss together. Our main ask is something that can easily be archived and then referred back to at a later date. Conversations are a bit of a pain in terms of having to add participants after the game, plus the potential for mafia to post in the wrong chat more easily etc.
With the few things being talked about in other threads, I thought it would be prudent to make a thread to explain a little bit about us as a community, and how we tend to do things. Firstly, we take things pretty seriously. I don't mean we're boring because we're not! But in terms of the game itself, we do take it seriously and are generally full of very competitive personalities. Our games can get pretty heated during, but we are also pretty good for keeping it in game and completely dropping it afterwards. We all get on well outside of games and understand that what happens on the battlefield stays there.
Rankings
We do like to employ a rankings system (resetting on a yearly basis) and will look to do so again here, but if you want to opt-out of being included in the table at all then that's completely fine. Below is the link to the spreadsheet I created, which I try (emphasis on try) to update after each game. Feel free to take a look to get a feel for how we handle it. You can also look at this for things like your overall win rate, and win rate as each alignment. I've currently kept the last year's data in there so you can get a feel for it in action:
Mafia Rankings 2022.xlsx
1drv.ms The point system is counted as follows:
+3 for Victory
+1 for Tie
+1 for Awards
+1 for Hosting
The term "awards" accounts for MVPs and honourable mentions (HMs). Each game as standard, we ask the host to award 1 MVP and give out 2 HMs. The host is free to only give out 1 or 0 HMs if they don't feel like these awards were earned, but no more than 2. We used to have MVPs counting for 2 points rather than 1, but this caused more trouble than it was worth! Especially with awards generally being so subjective, and decided by a lone person. So we felt a flat 1 point for an award is the most fair way to do it.
Should there be ties in the rankings, the following tiebreak rules are applied:
1st Tiebreak - Points Per Game (Worth noting that points for hosting are not counted towards this)
2nd Tiebreak - Total MVPs
3rd Tiebreak - Total HMs
4th Tiebreak - Total Victories
Hosting
After some issues in the past, we decided on running with a system whereby we count games as either RANKED or UNRANKED based on a certain set of criteria. This is mostly to keep all aspects of the community catered to. For players that take things seriously, we don't want to cause frustration at them putting lots of effort into a game that ended up being wildly unbalanced or perhaps even bastard, and thus have this game reflected in the rankings. That said, we also want anybody to be able to give hosting a go if they'd like, and also want to allow for more crazy and silly (or perhaps testing grounds for mechanics you might later wish to use in ranked games) games.
Now, this will probably need a bit of thinking of how to move forward. The way we did it is we compiled an "Approved Hosts" list. This list was filled with people that had experience, and a history of putting together games that have been received well by the community. The criteria for having a ranked game would be that the game was either created by somebody on this list, or had been checked over and approved by somebody on this list (with them providing tweaks in order to better balance it if needed). Of course, with this being a coming together of 2 communities and us being unfamiliar with each other, this might not be the best way to start off. I am open to suggestions on how best to implement this system going forward.
As a more general rule, here are some stuff that tends to be reacted negatively to or considered bastard in our standard:
- Lynchproof roles
- Roles that punish town for doing their jobs correctly (scum having vengeful perks where they can choose anyone on their wagon to kill, scum PGOs etc)
- Unlimited redirectors for mafia
- Roles that are created to simply misdirect town (such as roles that make up phony results with no logic behind them)
- Cops that are off sanity that do not get revealed upon death
- Things that are just generally impossible to account for as town (its hard to think of generic examples, but plucked from a real game: some dude had the town bodyguard get killed at night, and instantly resurrect as a second serial killer without us being aware of the death in the first place.... Though apparently the host did post GIFS in the day write up to give us hints lmao)
- Roles like bulletproofs or commuters being unlimited
I'm sure there are more stuff but its hard to think of them without seeing them in action. We are fine with hosts making bastard games, but they MUST be advertised as bastard in the sign up thread.
We tend to operate by majority lynch in general, with night posting, character claiming etc allowed... However we are fine with the host changing any of these standards as long as it is obviously explained in the sign up thread and again in the game OP. We do, in general, give the host autonomy over any of the standards. One thing I noticed that we do as standard that tends to completely deviate from everywhere else is flexible deadlines. Generally, we do not have phases start and end at set times. We have them be flexible. A hammer will end the day early for example. Also, assuming all night actions have been submitted, and everyone left alive has posted in the thread (if night posting is allowed) then we tend to end the night early rather than making it go to deadline. Obviously this becomes more pertinent as the game gets towards the end. The night phase before lylo etc has lasted less than an hour in the past.
Can't think of anything else you will need to know but please feel free to ask any questions, and of course everything here is open for feedback and improvement and debate etc and so forth!
One thing we do also need to discuss is how best to do out of game chats (namely mafia chat and dead chat). I know conversations is an option, but most don't really like this. We always used to use QuickTopic which is unfortunately dead. The options we have been considering of late are conversations, discord, or something that seems very similar to quicktopic that I've forgotten the name of! Discord seems the most well rounded option, but to be honest most of us dont really want an instant messenger service due to the simple fact that it encourages way more active/spammy chats. Mafia is a big enough time commitment as is! That said, we never really agreed on a solution so perhaps something we can discuss together. Our main ask is something that can easily be archived and then referred back to at a later date. Conversations are a bit of a pain in terms of having to add participants after the game, plus the potential for mafia to post in the wrong chat more easily etc.
