DV, I am not engaging with you because I don't think it is productive. I've listened to enough of your complaints and tried to have a reasonable dialogue over the past few months and I'm frankly sick of it. I don't think the issues with lurking and moderation were nearly as bad as you're making out, nor that it was significantly worse than a regular game. Obviously it wasn't perfect and with the benefit of hindsight different, better decisions could have been made. I know I need to be clearer about what is and is not acceptable for V/LA, both in terms of length and expected level of communication during. I know I need to know more about off-site players before I let them take part in these games in case they are habitual flakers. I know that the current prod/replace/modkill system we have in place doesn't appear to be fulfilling its purpose and requires some kind of overhaul. I know that maybe I need to be less lenient on players who are usually valuable members of a game but also have a habit of disappearing, and to be more assertive rather than permissive when someone isn't sure they can continue but also doesn't want to explicitly ask to replace out. I know a lot more about running a team mafia event than I did a few months ago, and I also know that this was the only way to gain that knowledge.
There are lots of lessons to be learnt, but I'm just not interested in discussing them with someone who thinks that repeatedly dismissing my and my moderating team's efforts as a "joke" or calling me a "coward" counts as "constructive criticism". If you don't agree with my moderating style you are more than welcome to not play in my games, and if you want you can run your own team event or something if you'd like to know how easy it is.
RE: Nancy. Nancy asked for a week of V/LA (some of which was during Night) which was borderline but not unreasonable, before asking to increase it to a full 15 days. I didn't explicitly permit this, but to my regret I didn't deny it either. Ultimately I didn't think that someone would genuinely be completely absent for very nearly an entire game Day: turns out I was wrong, but by the time I realised this reality I figured she was close enough to being back to not need a replacement. This sadly escalated when it was revealed that Nancy (while still on V/LA but in a some less limited part of it) had been actively playing on MafiaScum, while having issues (only some of which were technical) accessing MTGS - at this point I considered it unacceptable to have been completely uncommunicative for so long (both in terms of playing the game and interacting with me, the mod) while apparently having enough access/availability to play on another site, regardless of the reasons why. Especially since (correctly or incorrectly) there was an obvious alignment-related reason for it. I therefore modkill Nancy. In retrospect, I take a lot of responsibility for it escalating to that - she should have been immediately replaced after requesting so long a V/La period, but I also think that if you know you're going to be totally unable to play for a long period of time you should voluntarily replace out instead of just ghosting. Nancy has her own version of events if she cares to post them, but they're not really that different.
Gemma's modkill was 100% justified, even if it was unfortunate given their mostly positive level of activity and engagement. The severity of the out-of-game information used, the affect it would have had on reads on Gemma, and the explicit mentioning of ongoing games on other sites even after the thread had been warned about it was simply not acceptable. If Gemma had privately messaged me with the information she found rather than posted it in the thread, she would not have been modkilled, and would have been thanked for her vigilance and discretion.
RE: Player numbers. I think we ultimately made eight replacements, which at 22% of 36 players is a pretty reasonable rate (2.6 players in a 12-man game, 3.5 in a 16-player game). Certainly more could have been made, but even then it wasn't an outrageous amount of replacements required, and most of them were handled pretty well with teams finding their own. Nonetheless, future team events should probably have a deeper replacement pool (e.g. every team has to provide a nominated sub), perhaps at the cost of smaller games. I also think future events will require some vetting of player reliability: in our excitement to hit 12-player games, we let in a lot of unknowns and higher-risk flakers which backfired. MafiaScum's team event was only open to players who had history and good standing on MS, and I now very much understand why.
Also the Team Discord chats are about to be publicised, so go check those out!
For those that need reminders:
Game 1 (Ecophagy) - The Death of Stalin Mafia - Town Win
Game 2 (Ganderin Dan) - Giant Robot Battle Royale II Mafia - Mafia Win
Game 3 (Silvercrys) - Monster Manual Mafia - Town Win
This gives us final standings of:
So congratulations to Team Not Particularly (Lissa, Randwolfsubout, and Arapocalypse) for their victory! Thank you everyone else for playing, especially all those new faces from MU and further afield, we really appreciated you all joining in and helping us make this a bigger event than expected, and we hope we can see a few of you around in some other games.
Massive thanks go to Silvercrys, Ganderin Dan, and Bur who were all absolutely crucial in getting this event off the ground and moderating their socks off. Additional thanks to all our replacements (Dels, Hunger, Anaklusmos, 7Hawk77, Shattiel, Wheat_Grinder, The Worst, I think that's everyone), who helped keep things going, often jumping head first into some really tough positions.
Let's try to keep general post-game discussion in this thread, we're really keen to hear feedback to try and improve for the next event. There's some stuff we know already (Nancy should have been replaced sooner, Mafia NKs should have been mandatory, more familiarity with players and expected activity levels beforehand could have curated a better player list), but the more discussion the better. For example, we think the games were pretty balanced (equivalent to MTGS Basics), but the addition of teams pushed them towards being townsided, even though a lot of teams didn't really utilize their private channels - what could be done to combat this in small, low complexity games?
Also I will be publicizing all discord channels soon, so this is your last chance to opt out if you don't want everyone to see them.
Thanks everyone for playing, and I hope you had fun!
Sadly things are going slower than anticpated: Role PMs will be going out within the next 24 hours. Please use the intervening time to get into the private channels on the Discord and examine the player lists, and let me know if you feel strongly enough to be shuffled into a different game.
I will not be allowing switches once the games have started, but if anyone has a genuine reason why they would prefer to switch now before role PMs go out, they may do so by PMing me as soon as possible. AS this is an exhibition event, I will also be treating all games with a very low tolerance for poor sportsmanship, flaming, and toxicity. Everyone, both MTGSers and newcomers alike, will be held to a high standard of decency and the game moderating team reserve the right to immediately force replace (or even modkill) people who are insistent on creating an unpleasant playing environment.
Speaking of, the moderating team and their games are:
Game 1: Ecophagy - The Death of Stalin Mafia
Game 2: Ganderin_Dan - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Mafia (probably)
Game 3: Silvercrys - D&D Monster Manual Mafia
We are now in the process of randing games, marshalling role PMs, and getting teams into their private channels. This can be sped up by joining the MTGS discord HERE, which is where the discord channels will be located.
Assuming you mean start of Day, it will start when it starts (which will be once role PMs are out and everyone has confirmed). The exact timing doesn't really matter does it?
So can I say "ara thinks the post by empoof is bad for [reasons]"
?
Obv don't want the game to just be relay chat and I have faith it won't but it'd certainly part of the fun to offer those insights sometimes
You can say what the [reasons] are (so long as you paraphrase/use your own words), but not the "ara thinks" bit. I think that a nebulous "after discussion with my team we think that...." should be ok, but once you start naming team mates you risk people drawing cross-game conclusions.
-We are now capped at 12 teams, and the games are taking shape. The games are expected to be low complexity closed setups, and we are looking to launch this on Saturday. thank you for your patience, we had a lot more signups than we were expecting!
Rules updates:
-Rules applying to what can and cannot be said in thread around things like team chats also applies to scum chat.
-For tiebreakers, teams which have been forced to make a replacement by a mod (because of inactivty or anything else) will place behind teams which did not. Teams which handle replacements entirely by themselves will not be penalised.
-If you are modkilled, your team counts as having lost that game regardless of which faction actually wins.
With 12 teams in, I think I'm going to soft close sign ups now. We need to put together some 12 player games (which I think would be easy enough to bump up to 13 or even 14 if needed), so there will be a short delay while we do this.
In the mean time, if anyone has ideas for the rules (specifically, how/if to break ties and exactly how to codify what can be said about private chats) now would be a good time to discuss them.
I don't mind being any of free agent, mod/helper (probably prefer this most? Might need a rundown of how to use the votecounting app), or replacement. Will be V/LA for the rest of this week, however.
I'll take you up on that modding request unless you receive an offer you can't refuse.
There are lots of lessons to be learnt, but I'm just not interested in discussing them with someone who thinks that repeatedly dismissing my and my moderating team's efforts as a "joke" or calling me a "coward" counts as "constructive criticism". If you don't agree with my moderating style you are more than welcome to not play in my games, and if you want you can run your own team event or something if you'd like to know how easy it is.
I frankly do not agree, although you are welcome to your opinion. I would prefer if you didn't present them with so much vitriol.
Gemma's modkill was 100% justified, even if it was unfortunate given their mostly positive level of activity and engagement. The severity of the out-of-game information used, the affect it would have had on reads on Gemma, and the explicit mentioning of ongoing games on other sites even after the thread had been warned about it was simply not acceptable. If Gemma had privately messaged me with the information she found rather than posted it in the thread, she would not have been modkilled, and would have been thanked for her vigilance and discretion.
RE: Player numbers. I think we ultimately made eight replacements, which at 22% of 36 players is a pretty reasonable rate (2.6 players in a 12-man game, 3.5 in a 16-player game). Certainly more could have been made, but even then it wasn't an outrageous amount of replacements required, and most of them were handled pretty well with teams finding their own. Nonetheless, future team events should probably have a deeper replacement pool (e.g. every team has to provide a nominated sub), perhaps at the cost of smaller games. I also think future events will require some vetting of player reliability: in our excitement to hit 12-player games, we let in a lot of unknowns and higher-risk flakers which backfired. MafiaScum's team event was only open to players who had history and good standing on MS, and I now very much understand why.
Also the Team Discord chats are about to be publicised, so go check those out!
For those that need reminders:
Game 1 (Ecophagy) - The Death of Stalin Mafia - Town Win
Game 2 (Ganderin Dan) - Giant Robot Battle Royale II Mafia - Mafia Win
Game 3 (Silvercrys) - Monster Manual Mafia - Town Win
This gives us final standings of:
So congratulations to Team Not Particularly (Lissa, Randwolfsubout, and Arapocalypse) for their victory! Thank you everyone else for playing, especially all those new faces from MU and further afield, we really appreciated you all joining in and helping us make this a bigger event than expected, and we hope we can see a few of you around in some other games.
Massive thanks go to Silvercrys, Ganderin Dan, and Bur who were all absolutely crucial in getting this event off the ground and moderating their socks off. Additional thanks to all our replacements (Dels, Hunger, Anaklusmos, 7Hawk77, Shattiel, Wheat_Grinder, The Worst, I think that's everyone), who helped keep things going, often jumping head first into some really tough positions.
Let's try to keep general post-game discussion in this thread, we're really keen to hear feedback to try and improve for the next event. There's some stuff we know already (Nancy should have been replaced sooner, Mafia NKs should have been mandatory, more familiarity with players and expected activity levels beforehand could have curated a better player list), but the more discussion the better. For example, we think the games were pretty balanced (equivalent to MTGS Basics), but the addition of teams pushed them towards being townsided, even though a lot of teams didn't really utilize their private channels - what could be done to combat this in small, low complexity games?
Also I will be publicizing all discord channels soon, so this is your last chance to opt out if you don't want everyone to see them.
Thanks everyone for playing, and I hope you had fun!
My aplogies.
I will not be allowing switches once the games have started, but if anyone has a genuine reason why they would prefer to switch now before role PMs go out, they may do so by PMing me as soon as possible. AS this is an exhibition event, I will also be treating all games with a very low tolerance for poor sportsmanship, flaming, and toxicity. Everyone, both MTGSers and newcomers alike, will be held to a high standard of decency and the game moderating team reserve the right to immediately force replace (or even modkill) people who are insistent on creating an unpleasant playing environment.
Speaking of, the moderating team and their games are:
Game 1: Ecophagy - The Death of Stalin Mafia
Game 2: Ganderin_Dan - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Mafia (probably)
Game 3: Silvercrys - D&D Monster Manual Mafia
We are now in the process of randing games, marshalling role PMs, and getting teams into their private channels. This can be sped up by joining the MTGS discord HERE, which is where the discord channels will be located.
Well since I'm in BST I'll probably start at a reasonable BST time. But that's heavily dependant on how long it takes everyone to confirm.
Assuming you mean start of Day, it will start when it starts (which will be once role PMs are out and everyone has confirmed). The exact timing doesn't really matter does it?
I would advise anyone who is worried about personaility conflicts to talk to me in private and I'll see what I can do before the rand.
EDIT: We're also looking at more like tomorrow (Sunday) for launch as one of our mods is out of town. Sorry for the delay!
This is absolutely the intention - the spirit of the system is three people, each playing their own game with assisstance.
I know this is something MS has done, but I'm not really sure what it adds other than people trying to guess who swapped out of rolling scum.
You can say what the [reasons] are (so long as you paraphrase/use your own words), but not the "ara thinks" bit. I think that a nebulous "after discussion with my team we think that...." should be ok, but once you start naming team mates you risk people drawing cross-game conclusions.
-We are now capped at 12 teams, and the games are taking shape. The games are expected to be low complexity closed setups, and we are looking to launch this on Saturday. thank you for your patience, we had a lot more signups than we were expecting!
Rules updates:
-Rules applying to what can and cannot be said in thread around things like team chats also applies to scum chat.
-For tiebreakers, teams which have been forced to make a replacement by a mod (because of inactivty or anything else) will place behind teams which did not. Teams which handle replacements entirely by themselves will not be penalised.
-If you are modkilled, your team counts as having lost that game regardless of which faction actually wins.
In the mean time, if anyone has ideas for the rules (specifically, how/if to break ties and exactly how to codify what can be said about private chats) now would be a good time to discuss them.
Nachomamma
Tammy
Cantripmancer
Grapefruit
Killjoy
Empoof
I'll take you up on that modding request unless you receive an offer you can't refuse.