MTG Salvation

Votecount 2.3
Rhand Hunger - 3 (shadowlancerx, Vaimes, Dels_8)
Dels_8 - 2 (Rhand Hunger, Lissa)
sheepsaysmeep - 1 (Gemma)
Not Voting - 3 (Killjoy, Nancy Drew 39, sheepsaysmeep)

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

The deadline is 2200BST on August 18th (about a week from now).

Hunger is replacing Rhand, effective immediately.

Nancy is V/LA until the 16th. She may be replaced.

But ultimately that's just taking our current system and leaving sign ups open for even longer, albeit with a hard cut off date. We already have the PCL for signalling interest far in advance, and it sees very little usage. I also definitely don't think it gives us more flexibility - we have to commit to a game X months before it runs, as opposed to the current system which allows us to essentially pick whatever game we think would work best (at the cost of less notice).

We also don't want it to make it more difficult to host games (e.g. requiring backup mods and setups finished fat in advance), as we have few enough games to run as it is.

Stickies
Definitely could consolidate these, I think even right now we could:

• Unsticky the Theory & Discussion thread.
• Combine the Replacement and Player Contact list thread (Discord is a more active place for replacements, and announcements of games tbh)
• Create a new (locked) thread under the banner of "Resources" which includes the general rules, information for new players, our articles, and the Vote Counter

This would take us to the Council thread, a PCL/Replacements thread, Hosting/queues thread, Resources thread, and the open sign ups.

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Staff
I think saying Iso is our only hope is a bit disingenuous consider admins Cythare and Wildfire are both pretty familiar with Mafia, and we have our local mod Bur, plus other faces on staff like ExpiredRascals. But obviously I don't know what goes on behind closed doors, and I can only hope that if this discussion was actually serious then the MTGS staff would involve the Mafia community at large.

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Game Scheduling

I really don't think this is a good idea. Fundamentally, I don't think the solution to "our sign ups take too long" is "ok, let's make the sign up period longer". While it'd be nice to know when a game will fire when you sign up, I think it is impractical to ask people to commit X months in advance, and you will have many problems with people forgetting/no longer being available but not outing/mods not being ready or falling through leaving people effectively signed up for a game they don't want to play, or even people waiting months and months only to get randomed out. The significantly simply solution to knowing when a game would start would just be a hard cap on sign up length.

I also think that scheduling when games will fire is a very difficult process: game length is variable, which means it will be very difficult to gauge how many people will actually be available to play when a game fires, and I think it will be very difficult to avoid periods where either a game could fire but isn't (because some people are free but the fire date hasn't hit), or the inverse and overlaps of games that strain the playerbase. Basically, I don't think you can reliably predict when a game should fire, and I think the resulting scheduling issues would cause more harm than good - it reduces flexibility in a system that leans quite heavily on the ability to look at what games are actually ready to fire and the availability of the player base to put a finger in the air and pick a game to open.

I think scheduled games would be an excellent idea for a very small forum that struggled to get enough players for a single game, so as to coordinate the few members it has to get something off the ground, but we are some distance from being in that position.


I think ultimately what we want to always have some sort of sign ups open and for games to fire quickly. Perhaps the problem is we do not have the numbers to support this policy: when we hit current capacity we either have signups which take a long time to fill (usually requiring an ongoing game to end), or we just have no sign ups open at all (and then people just walk away because there's nothing going on). This is sort of the problem the PCL was supposed to fix, but it clearly hasn't. Scheduling games would partially fix this by ensuring that games fired at regular known intervals, so that people when to come around, but at the cost of flexibility and being worse at responding to demand or playerbase utilisation. Deadlines on signups would at least force the next game to refresh until it hit one that was exiting enough to bump demand up to actually fire, but risks skipping over games simply because the playerbase is at capacity (which I think is what has happened to Osie's Micro - people are occupied with the team games and Shadow's Normal, so demand for any new game is low).

Votecount 2.2
Rhand - 3 (shadowlancerx, Vaimes, Dels_8)
Dels_8 - 1 (Rhand)
sheepsaysmeep - 1 (Gemma)
Not Voting - 4 (Killjoy, Lissa, Nancy Drew 39, sheepsaysmeep)

With 9 alive it takes 5 to lynch.

The deadline is 2200BST on Saturday 18th August.

Based on the numbers I put together in 2016 and conversations with admins and some people from MU:
-MTGS user numbers as a whole more or less recovered from the Curse takeover in about a year, whereas the Mafia sub-forums have continued to languish. Not sure on the MTGS user numbers at the moment, but forums in general are suffering stiff competition from reddit.
-Mafia forums seem to be doing just fine: MU is very active, although I think MafiaScum is having some issues (but that's heavily cultural in that they have MTGS deadlines with MU-level activity which is causing absolutely massive games filled with low-content posts). MTGS is very much struggling to recruit from MU because despite our imaginative and usually well balanced games, the deadline length is something people really don't want to endure - MTGS is very unusual in the aspect of our deadlines.

So I don't think our decline is necessarily a consequence of a decline in general mafia interest, forum use, or MTGS itself. MTGS is doubtless no longer at the height of popularity it once was, but it is still proportionately far better off than our subforum.

On the rolling sign ups, I think it definitely has some of the drawbacks you mentioned: games can take a while to start, and people might just stop checking back if the same game stays open for too long. But if we are going to shelve games that don't fire within a time period, we have to be very sure that we are ok with abandoning our historical "everyone gets a go" policy, and also avoiding disincentivising people from making games because they think "what's the point of all the effort if it won't even get played?". We would also need a lot more games in the queues or the faster turnaround will stall out quickly. But at least the shorter queues make it easier for someone to have a game fail to fire and then make changes and get another shot.

An alternative might be having a rolling queue for each game type - at least then a stagnating game only blocks one queue as opposed to all of them, and it would allow us to more easily gauge what the popular game types are. I know the Player Contact List sort of fulfills this function, but it doesn't really in practice. Downside would be a lot of sticky posts (maybe a subforum for them with a BIG OBVIOUS THREAD pointing at them?).

Votecount 2.1
Dels_8 - 1 (Rhand)
Rhand - 1 (shadowlancerx)
Killjoy - 1 (Dels_8)
Not Voting - 6 (Gemma, Killjoy, Lissa, Nancy Drew 39, sheepsaysmeep, Vaimes)

With 9 alive it takes 5 to lynch.

The deadline is 2200BST on Saturday 18th of August.

Nancy is V/LA, but I hope not for much longer.

The newspapers are conspicuously void of any mentioned of yesterday’s...incident. It certainly helps that the shroud of Stalin’s death covering Moscow has made it easy to turn reporter’s away, although the fact that those that don’t comply have a tendency to go missing has helped as well.

The committee has assembled for another day. There is much to do: Stalin’s funeral must be planned, his estate handled, and the public soothed, on top of all the other million jobs that must be done each day to prevent the collapse of society.

Two members have failed to attend the morning meeting. Their absence has been noted in the minutes (but the obscene jokes at their expense remain unrecorded), and the meeting commences without them. However, when they fail to turn up for breakfast the worry begins.

As if waiting for consternation to reach a certain volume, an aid appears. He nervously enters the room.

“Um”

“Spit out, boy. Or did your tongue get sent to the Gulag as well as your mother? Hur Hur Hur”

Going redder by the moment, the boy stammers out the news:

“C-c-comrade Molotov, sirs, h-h-he’s dead”.

In the grim silence, military police are dispatched to investigate. LastWhisper, Vyacheslav Molotov was murdered in his apartment, shot from close range. A staunch party loyalist, his loss ripples through the room. The conspiracy everyone always suspected is real, and this is very bad news indeed.

An hour later, Wheat_Grinder, Anastas Mikoyan’s corpse is found in an alleyway, his hands bound, and a bullethole straight through his head.

There is a lot more vodka poured into coffee than usual this morning.


LastWhisper has been killed. He was Vyacheslav Molotov - Minister for Foreign Affairs, Town Tracker.


Wheat_Grinder has been killed. He was Anastas Mikoyan - Minister for Trade, Vanilla Town



It is now Day 2, and you may begin posting. This Day will end at 2200BST on Saturday 18th of August.

With 9 Alive, it takes 5 to lynch

Day 1 Final Votecount
roz_the_eevee - 7 (Gemma, sheepsaysmeep, Lissa, Vaimes, Rhand, Wheat_Grinder, Lastwhisper)
Rhand - 2 (Killjoy, shadowlancerx)
Lissa - 1 (roz_the_eevee)
Lastwhisper - 1 (Dels_8)
Not Voting - 1 (Nancy Drew 39)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The frank and open discussion rapidly disintegrates into a maelstrom of shouting. Accusations of treason fly thick and fast, mingled with more accurate allegations of incompetence and self-serving.

The whirl centres on Roz_the_eevee, who seems to attempt to ride out the storm, embracing the chaos and seeming to take confidence from it.

Too much confidence.

"Are you genuinely suggesting that the spymaster and chief of secret police himself might be attempting to undermine and manipulate us?"

Eyes swivel. This is exactly what they are suggesting.

"Now, gentlemen, comrades, just because I happen to operate in the shadows doesn't mean it's not all for the good of the party and out (glorious, recently departed) leader?"

But they don't seem to be listening. In eerie echo, they real off a list of crimes one at a time

"Secret murders without trial"
"Assassinating innocents to further your agenda"
"Treachery against the Soviet Union"
"Giving help to foreign powers"
"Sexual deviancy"
"Bourgeois immorality"

Still reeling off lists of real and imagined crimes against the Party and the People, the committee close around Roz_the_eevee. He struggles, but cannot fight so many determined hands.

Roz_the_Eevee has been lynched. He was Lavrentiy Beria - Head of NKVD Security Forces, Vanilla Town.



It is now Night 1, which will end in 72 hours. Please do not post in thread. You may continue to talk in your team chats.

Votecount 1.10
roz_the_eevee - 5 (Gemma, sheepsaysmeep, Lissa, Vaimes, Rhand)
Rhand - 3 (Killjoy, Wheat_Grinder, shadowlancerx)
Lissa - 1 (roz_the_eevee)
Lastwhisper - 1 (Dels_8)
shadowlancerx - 1 (Lastwhisper)
Not Voting - 1 (Nancy Drew 39)

With 12 alive it takes 7 to lynch. You are reminded that the following rule is in effect:

If the Deadline is reached, I will pretend everyone not voting does not exist: if there is a majority vote, that player will be lynched. If not, the Day will end in a No Lynch

The deadline is 2200BST on Wednesday August 1st. This is in TWO MINUTES.

Votecount 1.9
Rhand - 4 (Killjoy, Vaimes, Wheat_Grinder, shadowlancerx)
roz_the_eevee - 3 (Gemma, sheepsaysmeep, Lissa)
Lissa - 1 (roz_the_eevee)
Lastwhisper - 1 (Dels_8)
shadowlancerx - 1 (Lastwhisper)
Dels_8 - 1 (Rhand)
Not Voting - 1 (Nancy Drew 39)

With 12 alive it takes 7 to lynch. You are reminded that the following rule is in effect:

If the Deadline is reached, I will pretend everyone not voting does not exist: if there is a majority vote, that player will be lynched. If not, the Day will end in a No Lynch

The deadline is 2200BST on Wednesday August 1st. This is in TEN MINUTES.

Votecount 1.8
shadowlancerx - 3 (sheepsaysmeep, Lastwhisper, Rhand)
Wheat_Grinder - 2 (Killjoy, Lissa)
roz_the_eevee - 2 (Regfan, Gemma)
Rhand - 2 (shadowlancerx, Wheat_Grinder)
Lissa - 1 (roz_the_eevee)
Lastwhisper - 1 (Vaimes)
Not Voting - 1 (Nancy Drew 39)

With 12 alive it takes 7 to lynch. You are reminded that the following rule is in effect:

If the Deadline is reached, I will pretend everyone not voting does not exist: if there is a majority vote, that player will be lynched. If not, the Day will end in a No Lynch

The deadline is 2200BST on Wednesday August 1st. This is in ONE hour.

Votecount 1.7
roz_the_eevee - 4 (Lissa, shadowlancerx, Regfan Dels_8, Gemma)
shadowlancerx - 3 (sheepsaysmeep, Lastwhisper, Wheat_Grinder)
Wheat_Grinder - 2 (Killjoy, Rhand)
Lissa - 1 (roz_the_eevee)
Lastwhisper - 1 (Vaimes)
Not Voting - 1 (Nancy Drew 39)

With 12 Alive it takes 7 to lynch.

The deadline is 2200BST on Wednesday August 1st. This is in 4ish hours.

Dels_8 is replacing Regfan. No deadline extension is currently planned.

Votecount 1.6
shadowlancerx - 3 (sheepsaysmeep, Lastwhisper, Wheat_Grinder)
roz_the_eevee - 3 (Gemma, Lissa, shadowlancerx)
Wheat_Grinder - 2 (Killjoy, Rhand)
Rhand - 1 (Vaimes)
Lissa - 1 (roz_the_eevee)
Not Voting - 2 (Regfan, Nancy Drew 39)

With 12 alive it takes 7 to lynch.

The deadline is 2200BST on Wednesday August 1st. This is in 24 hours.