In that event, since the blacklist is uncontested and we've received multiple complaints, I'll institute a six month temp-ban in case TS changes his position.
In addition to that idea, I've been working on something that *might* be well-suited to that MU recruitment kickstarter game. Would we have interest in that? Would this be something that we'd consider a good show-case of MTGS design and flavor?
Eve's Horizon. It was nearly the dirtiest bar on Echo Prime. The mingled dust and grit of more than a dozen neighboring worlds was ground deep into the cracks and crannies of the worn, gun-metal grey flooring. The glasses, mismatched, stacked in untidy heaps behind the counter, were smudged with oil, grease, and spit. Low, clouded light filtered through smoke and steam, obscuring as much as illuminating. It was not a bar where you went to sate a common appetite, or find a kindred soul. It was the kind of bar you went to, to get yourself hopelessly lost, time slipping through numbed fingers, numbed minds, like water spilling through the vacuum of blackest space. It was six streets from the starport terminal, and down nine levels from the surface plates and landing strips of the bustling, working city. Warmth seeped languorously from floor-plates dotted throughout the room, staving off the creeping chill that would sweep over the city from its outer edges to its core in less than three hours, if the city's reactors came undone. Light-years from humanity's distant origin, scattered pockets of life clung tenaciously to harbors of rock and metal and steel, balanced on the razor's edge separating dirt and the shadowed and star-strewn sky.
It was not the first time Marlow had darkened the doorway of Eve's Horizon. Once every few months, he would arrive, order a drink, meet briefly with hard-eyed men with slow stares, and a freighter would take on a load of cargo, which Earth Authority customs would pointedly ignore, as they had been well paid to do.
Dirk Marlow sat at his usual table, ordered his usual drink, and waited.
Someone else entered the bar - not a regular. Earth Authority uniform. Nobody quite met her eyes. Marlow stared into his drink.
She lowered her voice. "Look, Dirk, I can't go through with this one."
Marlow swirled the ice in his drink. "Having second thoughts about getting in bed with the rebellion?"
She gave him a level look. "No. And don't be an ********, Marlow. We've been through plenty, and I've put my ass on the line for you more times than I count. But you need to be straight with me, this time. I need to know what I'm getting into."
"It's just another shipment."
"It is NOT just another shipment. Don't pull that on me. Arms for the rebellion - I can live with that on my conscience. But what you're shipping - sophisticated genetic splicers, DNA readers, viral recoding cultures - I don't like what that looks like, Dirk."
"And what do you think that looks like?"
"A pile of a trillion dead bodies, hatching flies. That's what it looks like to me. You people always said this rebellion was for the common man. If you start-"
"Start what? Start killing off entire planets? Have the news reports say it was all just a freak virus? Yeah, it'd be just terrible if somebody got up to that." Marlow's fist tightened involuntarily. "You know, sometimes I don't know how you bring yourself to put on that uniform ever day and see yourself in the mirror."
"That's bull*****. You know what I've done for you. And it wasn't just for the money. And it wasn't your charming personality, either. You wanna talk about looking in the mirror? That's fresh, coming from someone who wants to remake himself into a mass murderer."
"You really think that's what I'm up to? Do you really know me that little?"
She paused. "It looks bad, Marlow. And I don't know all the people you work with. I can't just rubber stamp this and let it pass. We both know that things can't stay as they are. The people won't stand for being ordered how to live their lives from people who live a hundred thousand light years away, with no real say. The five party system is broken, and we all know it. But if it comes down to it, I don't what that kind of blood on my hands, and I hope you and your friends don't, either. So why don't you tell me what this is really about, if you can. Because if you can't, that cargo isn't going to move. Not unless you want to shoot your way out."
"I can't. It's too big, and I'm just an errand boy. They say jump, I jump. But I trust them, and so should you. We've never let you down."
She shook her head. "No. No, Marlow. You know more than you're letting on. You're not just some provincial chief. I've seen the way your men look at you, the way they jump. You know more about what's going on out there than even I do. There's more to you than that. Way more."
An edge crept into his voice. "And if I say no? You going to beat it out of me? Disappear me into some lightless vacuum capsule, fire me into the sun? He moved to get up.
"Marlow. Stop." She slammed her hand down over his. "Look, I know we've had our rough patches. But we've had some good times too, haven't we? I've watched your back this long. And I've been trusting you, for a long time. It's time for a little bit of that to come around. Make me believe, Marlow. That's all I ask." She let go of his hand.
His eyes bored a hole in the table. Then he let out a deep breath.
"The rebellion is finished, Kate. It's over. In the last week, they've wiped twelve more planets off the map. One in a thousand survives the virus, and those that survive that are rounded up into camps and disposed of. Children, too. No witnesses, no questions. Every time we win, they burn us to the ground. They will never, ever let us hold territory of our own. Not even if it means wiping a quarter of the human race from existence to stop us."
Hands shaking, he drained his glass to the last drop. She waited for him go on. "We can't let them do that, but we can't give up, either. So we have to look to the future. Lay the groundwork for a blow they'll never see coming, and never come back from. Someday, years from now, maybe decades, when their guard is down. They still think they're fighting flesh and blood. They think we're fighting for power. They don't realize that they're fighting an idea, and ideas are immortal. You plant the right ideas in someone's head, and you control them. That's what this is about. Not killing. Control."
He met her eyes. "That's all that I can say and more. Is it good enough?"
The corner of her mouth turned down as she thought. She let out a breath. "Good enough."
Disinheritance is a game for 16 players. Players will vote not only for who they believe the most likely mafia player is, but will also vote publicly for players who they wish to "empower", granting those players access to new, more powerful, and more exotic night abilities. This system will emphasize the importance of behavioral analysis and deception more than ever before, directly linking each groups talent in the game's fundamental core skills to the effectiveness of both groups during the night period. In addition, both groups will have unparalleled flexibility and variety in strategic options at their disposal during the night period, if they are able to coordinate their (and their opponents') empower votes effectively.
To facilitate this greater cooperation, strategy, and trickery, this game will feature universal private communication between all players, with the sole restriction being the inability to quote role PMs/mod PMs. To creative and cunning minds, this should present a tremendous opportunity to exploit.
In addition, the game offers the capacity for an unlimited number of additional, non-voting player slots. These players will be assigned alignments, be able to freely comment on the game within a separate, publicly visible game thread, will share in the unlimited private communication privileges, and will be capable of affecting the game not only through contributing analysis, advice, and disinformation, but also in other, unexpected ways. Non-voting players slots may not affect the game with any abilities, nor do they count as hidden players or hydra accounts, but both non-voting and voting player slots should be advised that due to mechanics never before seen here or on any other forum, the alignment of non-voting players may become somewhat relevant during the course of the game...
Another thought that I had was updating/adjusting some of our older material for other sites and using that to bring new players into our community by running one-off games on those other sites and letting their players experience our unique flavor of Mafia without leaving home, then leaving them with a "this was one of our greatest hits, join up on MTGS to see the current games in these series." One good example would be SomethingAwful, which has a number of former MTGS players and somehow manages to fill 24 player games in a day or two; if we can recruit some of that player base, things would get much more interesting.
I'm seriously considering doing an XL version of MU2 to bring it up to 25 or so players and running it over there after MU4 is done. Any thoughts on whether this might be a good play?
I would probably hold off on that until we get better organized, and figure out who's going to be in charge of selecting what setups should run. It's likely to be a process similar to the FTQ, most likely put to a vote by the FTQ committee amongst multiple contenders.
Kind of tangential to that, I did rather enjoy that thing we did a while back where we had a game-creation contest in teams, where people who just wanted to do one bit (roles, flavour, whatever) could sell their skills. Maybe we could revive that to revitalise the queues. It could even be a short time limit, high pressure thing: each team has, say, 48 hours to create as complete a Mini as possible. It could even have the additional theme of "make a sequel/reboot of an existing game" if we wanted to push that.
If we run out of material for the FTQs at some point, that'd be a great idea.
Let's then encourage our players to come up with compelling games and the best-received ones they can consider making sequels for and submit them to the FTQ.
Which would be easier for our hosts: to rework and clean up something like Inheritance or The Greenwood Affair, or to start over from scratch and spend hours and hours coming up with plot points, flavor, and new PMs? Have you SEEN how much flavor text is in Xyre's games? That's a major commitment, and if it's complex new setup, you run a lot of risks with something going wrong with the balance, or a particular role, or maybe the flavor doesn't wind up quite as good as you thought, and it's a bit of a let-down. There's a reason a lot of our older hosts like Axelrod, those who are still around, aren't pumping out setups as often as they used to.
I'm not saying continuing a series is a bad thing, and there are plenty of plus sides. There just aren't enough differences with any other FTQ to deserve a different queue. That doesn't mean I would be anything other than pleased to see more sequels in the FTQ.
I'm not sure that we're talking about a new queue, in so much as we may be talking about material that we feature on MU for recruitment and/or cross-town purposes.
What you're saying is we need a queue that highlights the best MTGS has to offer, games which showcase the quintessential MTGS creativity. This is literally the point of the FTQ, your idea is just limiting to only to sequels/reboots for no good reason. Games which are not part of a series can be every bit as creative and high quality as those that are, and FTQ committee is what helps ensure that the games that run are the cream of the crop. Why limit it to games which are part of a known series?
It's the same logic that's supporting the cycle of reboots and known intellectual property films in Hollywood right now. You can either roll the dice on a new product fresh off the presses, or you can leverage existing work of high quality to make a superior product with greater ease than starting from scratch, and greater consistency in results. Not every FTQ game has been an instant classic that stands the rest of time, only a comparatively small number, but we have a nice archive built up at this point.
Hmm. Hold up a moment guys, I think Annorax is really onto something here.
It's not just that we're trying to start another FTQ or PCQ. He's talking about the way we market ourselves, and emphasizing our strongest designs and story-telling elements in an intentional manner. Not just for our own consumption, but for recruitment.
For instance, what if we ran a trilogy of games based on xyre's designwork? They could feature similar flavor and design, and I could imagine word-of-mouth and excitement building as the trilogy progresses. Not enough spots to sign up? Well, we've got all these other fine games available back on the mothership...
Now, let's say we got intentional about the way we offered those games, and did it on MU. Maybe in one of the cross-town games Askthepizzaguy proposed, for maximum impact Hell, I'd guess that even just as a spectator event you might have a few dozen people just observing. Think about the potential for recruiting.
An ironic problem with deadlines is some town will procrastinate on lynching if the deadline is too far away, which often leads sudden wagon-shifts at the last moment and someone getting lynched out of the blue & with little discussion to support that lynch.
About queues, diversity is good. Some players enjoy good old Mafia, some players enjoy mind-****ery, some players enjoy switching between the two. If we only have good old Mafia or only have mind-****ery, many players will get bored and/or leave. With an all-PCQ system, I'm afraid a plurality of players will end up pushing away whichever type of game they like the least, and as a consequence gradually push away the players who don't agree with that group.
@TappingStones: Stay tuned for my upcoming game!
My expectation is that we'll bounce between the various game types much more fluidly. Mind Screw falling out of fashion? Ok, let's do something a little less bastard-y. Large game hasn't fired in a while? Ok, let's give that one a shot.
I think half the problem with the basics and the current normal games is that they just. don't. change. Eventually that gets stale, and you need to switch things up.
Sure, have at it - then if the trend continues from before, where larger games are still unable to fill at a reasonable pace, can we go back to the previous method, or change the queue to size-based games?
Personally, I'd be fine erasing the "normals" distinction, making us essentially size-based plus constant PCQ, but I understand that there's some strong minority opposition to moving in that direction re: Normals.
Larger issue is that going back to our present system doesn't address the issue of large games not filling. Well, it addresses THAT issue, but not the catastrophic side effects of simply bludgeoning the playerbase into getting enough people to fire a game of a type that's clearly not in demand, before they can get to playing the games that ARE in demand, and that would help the sub grow.
Our focus has to be on what's going to grow the sub and keep it healthy, above all else. Our queue system has to adapt to serve those priorities, not vice versa.
Also, I would really prefer if you guys came up with unanimous rules/guidelines for the running the games (as in, in which order to launch set-ups and such). It would make my job easier.
Agree the survey would be a nice idea - probably a poll would work best.
Xyre's idea of a PCQ-bonus to hosts who got bumped is a good compromise, I think.
The most important guideline for firing signups, IMO, is that the mini queue and micro queues should fire continually. At least one of those should be open at all times. We need a source of games that is always open, upon demand, and that has the capability of filling quickly. Not over the course of weeks or months.
So you're suggesting we should punish the hosts who took the time to create a balanced setup for the enjoyment of the players, get it reviewed (and getting reviewers these days is no small feat), and waited patiently on the list for months to be able to share their game with the players, just because we can't support three large games at a time?
If we have to, why not just run 2 of (PCQ, Normal, Specialty) at a time until the Specialty list clears up? And don't necessarily restrict the ability for large games to have sign-ups open - when enough players die in either, we'll see people start to fill the empty slots.
Punish? No. But if it's negatively impacting the health of the subforum, that takes priority. Otherwise, *none* of the game hosts will be running games.
Presumably, our hosts are designing their games for the benefit of the community, because they'd like to contribute to it. If we get in a situation where we're weirdly prioritizing the interests of game hosts in running games over the 16-30 people who may or may not want to play in said game, then we're killing ourselves.
The lifeblood of this forum is providing games that people WANT to play in. If you don't have that, you don't have a sub. And for every day that goes by without the ability to sign up for a game that people want to play in, we're turning people away and getting them out of the habit of checking on us and signing up for games. We can't continue that policy. It's been in effect too long already, with catastrophic results. Where are all our older players? Where are the new players coming in? We need to end this, not six to nine months from now, but immediately.
Should we simply make a move towards making this listed as a game rule more commonly?
I don't think it's really a probation/blacklist offense unless it intentional and/or repeated. There are plenty of ways to cheat that haven't been added to our rules as an exhaustive list of things you shouldn't do.
Links to the offending behaviors?
No objections to removals of Annorax, Proph, and Megs.
Each player may select one player with which to communicate privately, through a QT?
Including the non-voting players? And the non-voters get to select a kingmaker to cast a real vote in the primary thread?
Eve's Horizon. It was nearly the dirtiest bar on Echo Prime. The mingled dust and grit of more than a dozen neighboring worlds was ground deep into the cracks and crannies of the worn, gun-metal grey flooring. The glasses, mismatched, stacked in untidy heaps behind the counter, were smudged with oil, grease, and spit. Low, clouded light filtered through smoke and steam, obscuring as much as illuminating. It was not a bar where you went to sate a common appetite, or find a kindred soul. It was the kind of bar you went to, to get yourself hopelessly lost, time slipping through numbed fingers, numbed minds, like water spilling through the vacuum of blackest space. It was six streets from the starport terminal, and down nine levels from the surface plates and landing strips of the bustling, working city. Warmth seeped languorously from floor-plates dotted throughout the room, staving off the creeping chill that would sweep over the city from its outer edges to its core in less than three hours, if the city's reactors came undone. Light-years from humanity's distant origin, scattered pockets of life clung tenaciously to harbors of rock and metal and steel, balanced on the razor's edge separating dirt and the shadowed and star-strewn sky.
It was not the first time Marlow had darkened the doorway of Eve's Horizon. Once every few months, he would arrive, order a drink, meet briefly with hard-eyed men with slow stares, and a freighter would take on a load of cargo, which Earth Authority customs would pointedly ignore, as they had been well paid to do.
Dirk Marlow sat at his usual table, ordered his usual drink, and waited.
Someone else entered the bar - not a regular. Earth Authority uniform. Nobody quite met her eyes. Marlow stared into his drink.
She lowered her voice. "Look, Dirk, I can't go through with this one."
Marlow swirled the ice in his drink. "Having second thoughts about getting in bed with the rebellion?"
She gave him a level look. "No. And don't be an ********, Marlow. We've been through plenty, and I've put my ass on the line for you more times than I count. But you need to be straight with me, this time. I need to know what I'm getting into."
"It's just another shipment."
"It is NOT just another shipment. Don't pull that on me. Arms for the rebellion - I can live with that on my conscience. But what you're shipping - sophisticated genetic splicers, DNA readers, viral recoding cultures - I don't like what that looks like, Dirk."
"And what do you think that looks like?"
"A pile of a trillion dead bodies, hatching flies. That's what it looks like to me. You people always said this rebellion was for the common man. If you start-"
"Start what? Start killing off entire planets? Have the news reports say it was all just a freak virus? Yeah, it'd be just terrible if somebody got up to that." Marlow's fist tightened involuntarily. "You know, sometimes I don't know how you bring yourself to put on that uniform ever day and see yourself in the mirror."
"That's bull*****. You know what I've done for you. And it wasn't just for the money. And it wasn't your charming personality, either. You wanna talk about looking in the mirror? That's fresh, coming from someone who wants to remake himself into a mass murderer."
"You really think that's what I'm up to? Do you really know me that little?"
She paused. "It looks bad, Marlow. And I don't know all the people you work with. I can't just rubber stamp this and let it pass. We both know that things can't stay as they are. The people won't stand for being ordered how to live their lives from people who live a hundred thousand light years away, with no real say. The five party system is broken, and we all know it. But if it comes down to it, I don't what that kind of blood on my hands, and I hope you and your friends don't, either. So why don't you tell me what this is really about, if you can. Because if you can't, that cargo isn't going to move. Not unless you want to shoot your way out."
"I can't. It's too big, and I'm just an errand boy. They say jump, I jump. But I trust them, and so should you. We've never let you down."
She shook her head. "No. No, Marlow. You know more than you're letting on. You're not just some provincial chief. I've seen the way your men look at you, the way they jump. You know more about what's going on out there than even I do. There's more to you than that. Way more."
An edge crept into his voice. "And if I say no? You going to beat it out of me? Disappear me into some lightless vacuum capsule, fire me into the sun? He moved to get up.
"Marlow. Stop." She slammed her hand down over his. "Look, I know we've had our rough patches. But we've had some good times too, haven't we? I've watched your back this long. And I've been trusting you, for a long time. It's time for a little bit of that to come around. Make me believe, Marlow. That's all I ask." She let go of his hand.
His eyes bored a hole in the table. Then he let out a deep breath.
"The rebellion is finished, Kate. It's over. In the last week, they've wiped twelve more planets off the map. One in a thousand survives the virus, and those that survive that are rounded up into camps and disposed of. Children, too. No witnesses, no questions. Every time we win, they burn us to the ground. They will never, ever let us hold territory of our own. Not even if it means wiping a quarter of the human race from existence to stop us."
Hands shaking, he drained his glass to the last drop. She waited for him go on. "We can't let them do that, but we can't give up, either. So we have to look to the future. Lay the groundwork for a blow they'll never see coming, and never come back from. Someday, years from now, maybe decades, when their guard is down. They still think they're fighting flesh and blood. They think we're fighting for power. They don't realize that they're fighting an idea, and ideas are immortal. You plant the right ideas in someone's head, and you control them. That's what this is about. Not killing. Control."
He met her eyes. "That's all that I can say and more. Is it good enough?"
The corner of her mouth turned down as she thought. She let out a breath. "Good enough."
Disinheritance is a game for 16 players. Players will vote not only for who they believe the most likely mafia player is, but will also vote publicly for players who they wish to "empower", granting those players access to new, more powerful, and more exotic night abilities. This system will emphasize the importance of behavioral analysis and deception more than ever before, directly linking each groups talent in the game's fundamental core skills to the effectiveness of both groups during the night period. In addition, both groups will have unparalleled flexibility and variety in strategic options at their disposal during the night period, if they are able to coordinate their (and their opponents') empower votes effectively.
To facilitate this greater cooperation, strategy, and trickery, this game will feature universal private communication between all players, with the sole restriction being the inability to quote role PMs/mod PMs. To creative and cunning minds, this should present a tremendous opportunity to exploit.
In addition, the game offers the capacity for an unlimited number of additional, non-voting player slots. These players will be assigned alignments, be able to freely comment on the game within a separate, publicly visible game thread, will share in the unlimited private communication privileges, and will be capable of affecting the game not only through contributing analysis, advice, and disinformation, but also in other, unexpected ways. Non-voting players slots may not affect the game with any abilities, nor do they count as hidden players or hydra accounts, but both non-voting and voting player slots should be advised that due to mechanics never before seen here or on any other forum, the alignment of non-voting players may become somewhat relevant during the course of the game...
I would probably hold off on that until we get better organized, and figure out who's going to be in charge of selecting what setups should run. It's likely to be a process similar to the FTQ, most likely put to a vote by the FTQ committee amongst multiple contenders.
If we run out of material for the FTQs at some point, that'd be a great idea.
Which would be easier for our hosts: to rework and clean up something like Inheritance or The Greenwood Affair, or to start over from scratch and spend hours and hours coming up with plot points, flavor, and new PMs? Have you SEEN how much flavor text is in Xyre's games? That's a major commitment, and if it's complex new setup, you run a lot of risks with something going wrong with the balance, or a particular role, or maybe the flavor doesn't wind up quite as good as you thought, and it's a bit of a let-down. There's a reason a lot of our older hosts like Axelrod, those who are still around, aren't pumping out setups as often as they used to.
I'm not sure that we're talking about a new queue, in so much as we may be talking about material that we feature on MU for recruitment and/or cross-town purposes.
It's the same logic that's supporting the cycle of reboots and known intellectual property films in Hollywood right now. You can either roll the dice on a new product fresh off the presses, or you can leverage existing work of high quality to make a superior product with greater ease than starting from scratch, and greater consistency in results. Not every FTQ game has been an instant classic that stands the rest of time, only a comparatively small number, but we have a nice archive built up at this point.
It's not just that we're trying to start another FTQ or PCQ. He's talking about the way we market ourselves, and emphasizing our strongest designs and story-telling elements in an intentional manner. Not just for our own consumption, but for recruitment.
For instance, what if we ran a trilogy of games based on xyre's designwork? They could feature similar flavor and design, and I could imagine word-of-mouth and excitement building as the trilogy progresses. Not enough spots to sign up? Well, we've got all these other fine games available back on the mothership...
Now, let's say we got intentional about the way we offered those games, and did it on MU. Maybe in one of the cross-town games Askthepizzaguy proposed, for maximum impact Hell, I'd guess that even just as a spectator event you might have a few dozen people just observing. Think about the potential for recruiting.
My expectation is that we'll bounce between the various game types much more fluidly. Mind Screw falling out of fashion? Ok, let's do something a little less bastard-y. Large game hasn't fired in a while? Ok, let's give that one a shot.
I think half the problem with the basics and the current normal games is that they just. don't. change. Eventually that gets stale, and you need to switch things up.
Personally, I'd be fine erasing the "normals" distinction, making us essentially size-based plus constant PCQ, but I understand that there's some strong minority opposition to moving in that direction re: Normals.
Larger issue is that going back to our present system doesn't address the issue of large games not filling. Well, it addresses THAT issue, but not the catastrophic side effects of simply bludgeoning the playerbase into getting enough people to fire a game of a type that's clearly not in demand, before they can get to playing the games that ARE in demand, and that would help the sub grow.
Our focus has to be on what's going to grow the sub and keep it healthy, above all else. Our queue system has to adapt to serve those priorities, not vice versa.
I suspect we may have people begin to volunteer to address the problem, if we come to that point, however.
Agree the survey would be a nice idea - probably a poll would work best.
Xyre's idea of a PCQ-bonus to hosts who got bumped is a good compromise, I think.
The most important guideline for firing signups, IMO, is that the mini queue and micro queues should fire continually. At least one of those should be open at all times. We need a source of games that is always open, upon demand, and that has the capability of filling quickly. Not over the course of weeks or months.
Punish? No. But if it's negatively impacting the health of the subforum, that takes priority. Otherwise, *none* of the game hosts will be running games.
Presumably, our hosts are designing their games for the benefit of the community, because they'd like to contribute to it. If we get in a situation where we're weirdly prioritizing the interests of game hosts in running games over the 16-30 people who may or may not want to play in said game, then we're killing ourselves.
The lifeblood of this forum is providing games that people WANT to play in. If you don't have that, you don't have a sub. And for every day that goes by without the ability to sign up for a game that people want to play in, we're turning people away and getting them out of the habit of checking on us and signing up for games. We can't continue that policy. It's been in effect too long already, with catastrophic results. Where are all our older players? Where are the new players coming in? We need to end this, not six to nine months from now, but immediately.
Should we simply make a move towards making this listed as a game rule more commonly?
I don't think it's really a probation/blacklist offense unless it intentional and/or repeated. There are plenty of ways to cheat that haven't been added to our rules as an exhaustive list of things you shouldn't do.