We simply do not have the active player base to fire games; even discord activity has noticeably decreased in the last few months.
Discord activity decreases because games take forever to start here. And it's probable that the more they do, then the less often people check the forum or Discord, and we run into a vicious cycle.
--
What we need to keep the community going is easy to say but not as easy to do. We need actual new blood. Not (only) players invited from other communities. These players can help fill up games (see: over half the playerbase in Voldemort), but if they don't stay and don't get involved with our community, then all they do is artifically inflate our ranks.
The MTGS Mafia community started small then grew thanks to people coming from the rest of the site, trying a game out of curiosity / boredom / already knowing Mafia and perhaps staying. Since MTGS is dying and most subforums are deserted, the natural influx of newcomers has stopped and instead nearly all the "new" players are "mercenaries" from other places.
If you remove these mercenaries, you are left with a dwindling "old guard" increasingly made of people who only play occasionally and at a slow pace. Eventually enough of the old guard will have moved on that the community won't be able to function with or without outside players. There's no point for them to come here if they can run the exact same games with the exact same people in their original communities. We have already reached the point where we badly need outside players just to run a small game.
Things will not get better with time. Fiddling with deadlines will have absolutely no long term effect. I have seen that movie already. It has a sad ending.
As long as they are distributed separately from abilities and alignment (ie any dwarf can end up with any role and on any side), do what you want :-). If characters are tied to roles in any way whatsoever, no matter how small, don't.
Discord activity decreases because games take forever to start here. And it's probable that the more they do, then the less often people check the forum or Discord, and we run into a vicious cycle.
--
What we need to keep the community going is easy to say but not as easy to do. We need actual new blood. Not (only) players invited from other communities. These players can help fill up games (see: over half the playerbase in Voldemort), but if they don't stay and don't get involved with our community, then all they do is artifically inflate our ranks.
The MTGS Mafia community started small then grew thanks to people coming from the rest of the site, trying a game out of curiosity / boredom / already knowing Mafia and perhaps staying. Since MTGS is dying and most subforums are deserted, the natural influx of newcomers has stopped and instead nearly all the "new" players are "mercenaries" from other places.
If you remove these mercenaries, you are left with a dwindling "old guard" increasingly made of people who only play occasionally and at a slow pace. Eventually enough of the old guard will have moved on that the community won't be able to function with or without outside players. There's no point for them to come here if they can run the exact same games with the exact same people in their original communities. We have already reached the point where we badly need outside players just to run a small game.
Things will not get better with time. Fiddling with deadlines will have absolutely no long term effect. I have seen that movie already. It has a sad ending.
Dibs on Dopey.