Mafia Capital (WWC XIII): Important Info Here -- READ OPENING POSTS!

[Persolus]

I was CommonMarble! We didn't interact much, but it's cool to see a name i remember.

[Master Radishes]

I was CommonMarble! We didn't interact much, but it's cool to see a name i remember.

Oh right, I remember you! Small (internet) world.

[AvatarVecna]

Aces & Eights is now recruiting.

[Caedorus]

Put me in the schedule, I'll want to make a sequel

[Xihirli]

Cool. Could you put me on the list, too? I don't have an idea but I probably will sometime in the next 5 years before my turn comes up.

And me, you forgot me.

[Illven]

And me, you forgot me.

I think a bunch of them were just deleted. I should have Maifoso's university and pizzeria?

[AvatarVecna]

Those three have been added. I don't think anything else is missing, but if you feel like you've declared interesting in running recently, check to make sure it's on there.

[Caedorus]

mine are present and steadily incoming!

[CaoimhinTheCape]

How long are we going to let the list of scheduled games get? We have enough in the list that the people near the end won't get to run those games till 2025 if our math was right and we don't play games more often.

I don't want to clog the list by putting my name out there a bunch of times in a row when I have no idea what my schedule looks like in two years time. But at this rate my choice is to either do that or run a game two years from now and only then get back into the list and presumably wait another two years.

Even putting aside my wanting to run games I'm worried that new players may join, get excited to run something, see the wait is so long, and then just lose interest.

[AvatarVecna]

How long are we going to let the list of scheduled games get? We have enough in the list that the people near the end won't get to run those games till 2025 if our math was right and we don't play games more often.

I don't want to clog the list by putting my name out there a bunch of times in a row when I have no idea what my schedule looks like in two years time. But at this rate my choice is to either do that or run a game two years from now and only then get back into the list and presumably wait another two years.

Even putting aside my wanting to run games I'm worried that new players may join, get excited to run something, see the wait is so long, and then just lose interest.

It's a difficult problem to solve, not because the solutions are complex but because they are dissatisfying in different ways.

1) Just run games more frequently. In a hypothetical world where we starting a new recruitment thread every week instead of every three weeks, all games currently on the roster will be expended sometime in March 2024 instead of November 2025. The problem here is that getting a full group for games that frequently is going to have game overlap (where lots of people are alive in multiple games at the same time), but also just games too frequently, which burns out interest. Games that might've gotten a chance if we were patient will instead wither and die on the vine. That's one way to reduce interest in narrating, but I'd hesitate to call it a solution. Running games more frequently is something you can't really get away with in a small community.

2) Make the community bigger. Go out there ITP preaching the wonders of Mafia, kidnap people into games against their will. With any luck, we can triple our number of devotees, at which point tripling the speed at which games take place won't necessarily burn out the community. For starters, WW/Mafia needs to take over everybody's signatures, not just mine. We'll have to spend money on an advertising blimp. You're going to have to apologize to everyone you've ever argued with over dumb D&D stuff. We all weasel our way into moderator permissions and sell off infraction-free-passes if you play a WW/Mafia game. Things like that.

3) That sounds like a lot of work. You know what isn't a lot of work? Deleting every game in the list that's gonna be narrated by somebody who already has a game in the list. That's pretty easy, and eliminates two dozen games from our backlog. You can only sign up to run another game when your current one ends. Granted, there's 21 people signed up to run games, and while that includes four people it's unclear will be around to run their games, that's still 17 people minimum to get through before new blood can get a crack at the list. If we don't do one of the above solutions in addition to this one, that's still 51 weeks to wait before their idea can flourish (almost a full year).

[Batcathat]

3) That sounds like a lot of work. You know what isn't a lot of work? Deleting every game in the list that's gonna be narrated by somebody who already has a game in the list. That's pretty easy, and eliminates two dozen games from our backlog. You can only sign up to run another game when your current one ends. Granted, there's 21 people signed up to run games, and while that includes four people it's unclear will be around to run their games, that's still 17 people minimum to get through before new blood can get a crack at the list. If we don't do one of the above solutions in addition to this one, that's still 51 weeks to wait before their idea can flourish (almost a full year).

This one seems to be worth considering. Right now the problem is kind of compounding itself, since people see the list being so long and figure they better sign up for another game, even if they already have several in the list (I'm certainly guilty of this myself, I think I have at least three on the list). It obviously doesn't solve the problem, but at least it might make it better (and the alternatives are indeed quite a lot of work ).

Though I suppose one potential issue might be that not everyone wants to narrate at the same interval, but I'm not sure how much of a problem that would be.

[AvatarVecna]

This one seems to be worth considering. Right now the problem is kind of compounding itself, since people see the list being so long and figure they better sign up for another game, even if they already have several in the list (I'm certainly guilty of this myself, I think I have at least three on the list). It obviously doesn't solve the problem, but at least it might make it better (and the alternatives are indeed quite a lot of work ).

Though I suppose one potential issue might be that not everyone wants to narrate at the same interval, but I'm not sure how much of a problem that would be.

You're not wrong. It's just a lot of the same problem. Are you gonna be up for running a game in three years? No? How about two years?

The best outcome is the second one, where the community makes like the grinch's heart and grows three sizes, but frankly that's not gonna happen. The third solution is probably the best for our purposes, and it's still mostly just mitigating the problem. I'm fine going through with this and paring down the schedule to one game per person at a time...but I wanna give it a few days so people have a chance to void any objections. Not gonna just delete 20+ games without people having a chance to get their two cents in.

[Allando]

I definitely think the solution should be a balance of these...
The third option seems to be the most effective, yet it is indeed just a delay.
The first two options seem hard tbh.
I would start with three and look from there. Or maybe something less radical than deleting all those games and making it for example that when someone schedules a new game which is their only game they get priority over all the second games: for example:
person a) I host game a1
person b) I host game b1
person a) I host game a2
person c) I host game c1
game order: a1, b1, c1, a2
Does this make any sense?

[Rogan]

Not gonna just delete 20+ games without people having a chance to get their two cents in.

My two cents: I'm fine with reducing the number of games to one. Sure, that's not the silver bullet, solving all our problems, but it helps. And maybe with an option for someone new to skip ahead, so they don't need to wait for a year till they get a chance.

Of course, getting more players would be cool as well. We should ask flat for this infraction reduction

[Batcathat]

On the topic of growing our community, there's not just recruiting new members but also keeping the old. We're gaining new people at a decent rate, but since people are also dropping off temporarily or permanently, we're not really growing very much. I can't say I have any great ideas for retaining people, but maybe someone else does?

[Illven]

On the topic of growing our community, there's not just recruiting new members but also keeping the old. We're gaining new people at a decent rate, but since people are also dropping off temporarily or permanently, we're not really growing very much. I can't say I have any great ideas for retaining people, but maybe someone else does?

Well first we need to ask why do players leave

[Taffimai]

Well first we need to ask why do players leave

I think you could ask ten people and end up with a dozen answers to that one.

[AvatarVecna]

I think you could ask ten people and end up with a dozen answers to that one.

I didn't think there was that many ways to spell my name.

[Let'sGetKraken]

I think you could ask ten people and end up with a dozen answers to that one.

Still, might be worth (respectfully) asking a few folks who were active but dropped.

I agree with #3 at least.

[bladescape]

I didn't think there was that many ways to spell my name.

There's over a hundred tbh

[flat_footed]

We should ask flat for this infraction reduction

If one wishes to obtain something, something of equal value must be given.

Spoiler: Who's First?

Show

[Illven]

Donates points to the cause.

[Snowblaze]

3) That sounds like a lot of work. You know what isn't a lot of work? Deleting every game in the list that's gonna be narrated by somebody who already has a game in the list. That's pretty easy, and eliminates two dozen games from our backlog. You can only sign up to run another game when your current one ends. Granted, there's 21 people signed up to run games, and while that includes four people it's unclear will be around to run their games, that's still 17 people minimum to get through before new blood can get a crack at the list. If we don't do one of the above solutions in addition to this one, that's still 51 weeks to wait before their idea can flourish (almost a full year).

...mmm. This could work I guess, but feels kind of harsh imo. There are probably different ways of achieving the same goal. For instance I like this solution:

I definitely think the solution should be a balance of these...
The third option seems to be the most effective, yet it is indeed just a delay.
The first two options seem hard tbh.
I would start with three and look from there. Or maybe something less radical than deleting all those games and making it for example that when someone schedules a new game which is their only game they get priority over all the second games: for example:
person a) I host game a1
person b) I host game b1
person a) I host game a2
person c) I host game c1
game order: a1, b1, c1, a2
Does this make any sense?

Or alternatively we could have a minimum number of games that have to come between each person's narration. That probably wouldn't solve the "new people waiting ages..." problem but it does mean existing players don't have to wait for years because someone else is on the schedule five times or something.

Or give newbies a "free queue-jumping pass" to... third/fourth/fifth on the schedule, so they can run their game in months rather than years.

Or stop people signing up with just "placeholder" or "I don't have an idea yet" - then again that probably developed as a response to the schedule problem itself, it just also happens to be making it worse. So we'd need another fix in addition to that.

I don't think moving to shorter time between games without first recruiting more players would work; iirc there's been a couple of times we've tried two week intervals which did lead to games overlapping and people getting burnt out.

As for recruitment... yes, it's a great idea in theory but in practice while we might manage a few players we're not going to manage to double or triple our current player count. Though given we have some players (cough me cough) who might not mind a quicker turnaround so much... I'd say we're looking at a regular base of 25-30 to double our current game running speed.

And that means "persuade people to stick around" not just "get someone to wander over for one game and then leave because they're not hopelessly addicted".

And then what happens when all our hypothetical new players also want to run games and the schedule increases just as much as the player count?

(Sidenote: I don't think people leaving or playing less regularly is something we can do much about? iirc a lot of the reasons regular players leave are burnout or RL stuff, neither of which we can/want to prevent.)

But... yeah, overall I think we probably need a way of ordering the schedule that isn't just "first come, first served".

[Taffimai]

If we're going to cull the schedule to one entry each, I propose that we each decide how to reduce our own entries so that responsibility (and the potential for hurt feelings) doesn't fall on AV.

I'm next up with Murder on the Orient Express, and I suggest that the second iteration of it gets scrapped so that after running I end up with only Crazy Idea 4, which I expect will end up at the bottom of the revised schedule which is fine (and feel free to move it down for any newcomers if necessary).

[rogue_alchemist]

For starters, WW/Mafia needs to take over everybody's signatures, not just mine.

How do we add that?

[Batcathat]

How do we add that?

There are banners (like the one AV uses) in one of the first posts in this thread that you can include in your sig.

Though as I've never seen an excuse to use Photoshop I didn't take, I'm kinda tempted to make something new. (I had what I thought was a neat idea for an animated one, but checked the rules and found out they are forbidden, so now I'm sad. )

[Snowblaze]

I'd add a banner except I never post outside this subforum (except technically recruitment threads) so I doubt it would do much.

wrt my games, keep the one that's actually not too far from the top of the schedule! (That is the "horrifically bastard" one.) I would also quite like to keep La Résistance but don't mind just re-adding it once my first game is underway if that's what you end up going for.

[CaoimhinTheCape]

I'll get around to adding the banner to my sig eventually but the only other thing I do on here is run one game. If I'm honest mostly what's kept me on the forums at all have been you guys so I don't think I'll end up bringing anyone in myself. I also don't know anyone else I can bring in from outside of the forums since our games are more involved/wordier than the only other place I could invite people from.

As for the schedule I'd be sort of biased since I'd benefit a lot from cutting it down, maybe if we stop doing repeat hosts going forward but grandfather in the people there now and let them voluntarily remove a game or two?

[JeenLeen]

I like idea #3 for lessening the backlog, and the suggestion of new players being able to jump the queue to run a game if they wish.
Would "new player" mean someone who hasn't run a game before, or something like "someone who has participated in less than X games" (3 or 4 seems a good cutoff)?

---

On retention reasons, I can think of three things I've seen alienate someone or almost alienate someone. For the most part, I think we've solved them in the current playstate.

1) Toxic players / atmosphere. I don't think this is an issue right now. A couple times something has come up, but everything seems friendly now.
I was worried I ostracized McGinty when she was active for a while, but I reached out to her and am pretty sure it was just other obligations. I think we're pretty friendly to new players with our de facto "no lynch D1 / no NK N1" rule for new players or returning players.
I also think we've been able to talk about when someone feels offended and be supportive/respectful.

2) Overly bastardy games. We've got a de facto thing of being fairly honest about if a game is bastardy or not. Maybe sometimes it's hidden to what degree, but even that's stopped a lot currently.

3) Meta reads dominating play to an irksome level.
One thing I think is a detriment to Mafia games all-in-all is that it's easier the better you know other players and their playstyle. (Part of the reason I never play Mafia IRL is that I'm often a horrible liar in-person and my friends can super-easily pick up on my tells.)
I don't think this is a problem per se, but I can see it being annoying/hard for a new player being at a disadvantage when playstyle histories come into play.
I also think it can demotivate current players. I'm hesitant to name names, but I it's noted often enough that I can say AV gets an unfair swing most games. Maybe that's gotten better lately.
No real solution to this, but something to keep in mind.

On another somewhat-related note, I like how we do private communication currently. I think we've got a good medium of it existing, but not going crazy. (I almost quit for a while when it was free for all, because (as someone wanting to play optimally) I'd feel compelled to reach out to folk with tons of QTs, but that was too annoying to be fun.)


--edit--
Another thought on metaplay: I've found it annoying how some stuff is found wolfy or not wolfy. I (usually) get it, and when I don't I try to ask if I think it won't get me lynched. I've gotten helpful answers, too.
But I guess a feeling of being pigeonholed into certain playstyles to not seem wolfy, while other players get around it. If anyone except Xihirli acted like Xihirli, they'd get lynched (at least until established). bladescape's enigmatics. Book Wombat's quiet and usually-little-substance posts. We accept those playstyles. But a new player (while getting sort of a pass D1 or maybe the first game), might feel a burn a couple games in and like they can't have fun.

On the other hand, different communities have different standards. From the little I saw of MU, posting rate is mind-boggingly different from here, and I assume there's different metagame of what's acceptable behavior for town. That's not really a problem, but it's something that could be discouraging.

[bladescape]

The last metaplay endpoint is an unfortunate byproduct of people looking for "what appears off to them."

Which is a natural byproduct of social deduction.

You see it on smaller scale with certain players who have a hard time not scumreading each other. Or one way.

So specific styles that seem outside the box are easier to suspect than ones that play in a way we find convincing.

The problem is that "looking for oddities/differences" is how you find wolves traditionally.

- - - Updated - - -

That was a horrible mess of words but I blame low sleep because prepping my holiday