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MafiEra Season 19 Review Thread |OT| How Do You Do, Fellow Mafia Players

Sawneeks

Sawneeks

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,845
Welcome everyone to our review thread for Season 19! Our review threads are to discuss the current state of our community and what we want to see changed, altered, or fixed in order to make our games even better for everyone. We have a few points we want to bring up below but please feel free to add anything else you feel is important! But first, thank you to our gamerunners this season!

Our games this season were:
Knives Out by Fanto
One Night Ultimate Werewolf [Scooby-Doo Edition] by Aeleus
Fate/Mafia by Lokiduck & Verelios
EastEnders: Season 1 by Aeleus
Among Us Mafia by Faddy
Metal Gear Solid by Natiko

Proposed changes for the new season and all seasons going forward:

  1. Should we make review threads for a game opt-in for public viewing? Currently all games have their review threads public after they are completed and the creator has to request it be kept private. This change would flip that default to being private and creators having to request it being public.
  2. Should we create a template of 'Important Rules' to give to new players in our community? This would include rules such as: Pronoun Rules, Modkills, No Quoting Role PMs, and possibly more with emphasis on reading the full rules list. If we do create this, what should we include?
  3. Change how Role PMs and our game rules look in regards to Modkills. The term Modkill, and possibly surrounding phrases, would either be bolded, italicized, highlighted, underlined, and/or some other form of text to draw attention to it.

Additional issues from this season we want to highlight and remind everyone of:

  • Please respect the boundaries of the game and the job of the gamerunners. Our rules are in place for a reason and we expect all players to adhere to them. This includes backseat moderating, respecting player pronouns, derailing games, and so on.

Changed all official documentation from 'lynch/lynched' to 'vote/voted out'
'Slips' during a game will be taken on a game-by-game basis in terms of moderation. Players who see said 'slip' will be given priority into a future game of their choice.
Rule 13 was updated to reflect breaking posting/voting restrictions and testing them in threads.
Rule 26 was updated to say that any player replaced or modkilled due to rule-breaking will receive end-game priority on their next sign up.


In addition to the Permament Replacement List we are going to start a Notification List for upcoming games! If you would like to be tagged whenever a game sign up begins or you would like to be a replacement for all games you don't play/spectate, please let myself, Aeleus, Dr. Monkey, or cabot know! :>

includes: weemadarthur, TheChuggernaut, lokiduck, Faddy, Fanto, Zipped, Reki, and Jman!


<.<


>.>

A GOTY of an indie darling, something to do with stars in a fantasy, a return of those kids with their stupid dog, a sequel to the holy grail fever dream, and….whatever [REDACTED] is?
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Natiko

Natiko

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,263
Wow, an entire season where I didn't review any of the games. What a time to be alive.

1. I say keep them private unless told otherwise.
2. Sure - pronouns, quoting from outside the thread (including PM), hostility, and no backseat modding.
3. I like the idea, but I suspect it will be hard to enforce.
 
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lokiduck

lokiduck

The Fallen
Mar 27, 2019
9,126
Washington
Sawneeks said:
Should we create a template of 'Important Rules' to give to new players in our community? This would include rules such as: Pronoun Rules, Modkills, No Quoting Role PMs, and possibly more with emphasis on reading the full rules list. If we do create this, what should we include?
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I fully support this. New players need the support they can get and having the most important rules be emphasized will definitely help them :D

Sawneeks said:
Change how Role PMs and our game rules look in regards to Modkills. The term Modkill, and possibly surrounding phrases, would either be bolded, italicized, highlighted, underlined, and/or some other form of text to draw attention to it.
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I love this idea and definitely thing we should do it. I'll be sure to update all my future mentions of modkilling with emphasis to help follow the new rule.

Sawneeks said:
Please respect the boundaries of the game and the job of the gamerunners. Our rules are in place for a reason and we expect all players to adhere to them. This includes backseat moderating, respecting player pronouns, derailing games, and so on.
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Thank you for mentioning this as well. One thing I would like to add is maybe including a rule or request that players refrain from trying to get information based on mechanical stuff such as chat numbers?

Chats are usually done in such a way that it's easy for the game runners/OM staff to move players around, so having players trying and sus someone out via asking what their chat number is is :I

As far as I'm concerned chat numbers are not apart of the actual game and should not be factored in when solving but others may disagree with me on that.

A GOTY of an indie darling, something to do with stars in a fantasy, a return of those kids with their stupid dog, a sequel to the holy grail fever dream, and….whatever [REDACTED] is?
1cd.png
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👀
 
FateShirou

FateShirou

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,090
I think there should be more leniency towards mod kills esp with quoting the entire role

where are the review threads btw (on OM)
 
MrHedin

MrHedin

Member
Dec 7, 2018
6,824
1. I like them as public because it's been helpful while making games to through and look and see some though processes. That said I can understand some creators wanting to keep it private so maybe when the game is ready to be archived that we just ask the creator instead of making it a default situation.
2. I think this would be a great idea.
3. I think it's a good idea and we would need a standard on how to write that in the roles.

Sawneeks said:
In addition to the Permament Replacement List we are going to start a Notification List for upcoming games! If you would like to be tagged whenever a game sign up begins or you would like to be a replacement for all games you don't play/spectate, please let myself, Aeleus, Dr. Monkey, or cabot know! :>

includes: weemadarthur, TheChuggernaut, lokiduck, Faddy, Fanto, Zipped, Reki, and Jman!
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Please add me to the permanent replacement list unless otherwise noted.

Sawneeks said:
A GOTY of an indie darling, something to do with stars in a fantasy, a return of those kids with their stupid dog, a sequel to the holy grail fever dream, and….whatever [REDACTED] is?
1cd.png
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Hey I know one of those references!
 
Zippedpinhead

Zippedpinhead

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,748
I think that the mod killing about role PM quoting needs to be defined.

obviously quoting your entire PM should be out. But what constitutes "breadcrumbs" and what constitutes "confirmation".

Case in point HP and I eventually (on our last day alive) figured out Natiko used the same joke in both our PMs and used it to soft confirm that at least we had the same death condition. That was considered crumbing but if we had figured it out day 1, a lot of our back and forth of frustration would have been cut out.

im Also for more unique names for chats, as Lokiduck said, I tried to game the system in fate/stay because each chat was numbered.
 
weemadarthur

weemadarthur

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,608
I have this feeling i missed a lot of drama About reading comprehension.

1. Switching default to private sounds fine, nobody outside the community wants to read them anyway presumably?
2. OK but all the rules are important and I thought the template already had "respect for others" in a separate section from "game termy rules". Anything that might help is great but this might turn out to be a human problem and not work to its purpose.
3. Sure. Templates are fun. But I've made JOKES about not reading my roles and they're just that, jokes. Players need to take some responsibility to get the information they need when they're confused. Most games, I converse with the gamerunner about what I may/may not do using examples that aren't directly applicable to the game so I am not begging for spoilers but can still understand how the role is likely to interact with other types of roles. And post restrictions/game specific rules that could result in modkill are *not that hard*.
 
Hawthorn

Hawthorn

Member
Jul 16, 2020
2,703
I don't have an opinion on switching the default for the review threads. I do find reading them interesting sometimes.

Around clarifying the rules, I think it's less about needing more emphasis/repetition/capital letters (althought that never hurts), and more about needing maybe slightly more clarity.

Right now, as I understand it, the rule is that (unless told otherwise) you can say your role name and your powers, and you can refer to/paraphrase flavor from your role pm. You can also lie about any of those things. You cannot post your whole role pm, or any significant part of it in a way that looks like it's been copy/pasted. You also can't post a fake role pm, or significant quotes from a fake role pm.

I feel like that's clear from the rules, but maybe only if you read a couple different sections together. I've seen people be confused about how "you can lie" interacts with "don't quote your pm". I think I've also seen people overcorrect and think that they're not allowed to say their role name because that's technically a quote.

My thoughts on Loki's suggestion are similar, I would be totally fine with a rule that said "do not quote chat numbers" or "don't use chat numbers for game purposes," but if it gets more general than that it needs to be clarified with examples. One person's example of something that's purely mechanical could be something that another person assumes is a purposeful clue from the game runner. Both assumptions could be in good faith, so the only solution is to be really explicit in the rules.

Next season's games seem intriguing..
 
Verelios

Verelios

Member
Oct 26, 2017
14,877
FateShirou said:
Maybe we should put the role pm on a image so it cant be copy and pasted?
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Finding a typo would be mighty awkward then, haha.

1. I don't have much problem changing review threads to private on default. We can just ask whether the gamerunner/s would like them public after the game ends.

2. A big one seems to be no direct quoting of their role PMs, as people have already stated. I think it would work better if new players were told in their role PMs that they can paraphrase their information, but not directly quote it.

3. Yeah, but something that doesn't blend in with the role PM might be good. Maybe put modkill rules in blue, bold and all caps? It would certainly stand out.
 
Hobohodo

Hobohodo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
239
I have nothing to contribute right now apart from that I FULLY endorse the title of this thread.
 
lokiduck

lokiduck

The Fallen
Mar 27, 2019
9,126
Washington
Zippedpinhead said:
im Also for more unique names for chats, as Lokiduck said, I tried to game the system in fate/stay because each chat was numbered.
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Having more creative names is all fine and good but that doesn't help the OM staff much when they need to put players in specific threads and there are a lot of them. I didn't want any confusion there so I numbered them.

I do have a solution to this issue for future games, but game runners shouldn't be forced to not use numbered chats because of players using it to game the system, which is why I was asking maybe we could make it a rule.
 
Kopite

Kopite

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,031
Re PMs, I think gamerunners hould specify in the opening posts in the scum/mason/lovers thread if we can quite our entire PM or not
 
IfGodCouldDie

IfGodCouldDie

Member
Nov 4, 2017
392
Canada
I've played two games on resetera, I don't think I've seen a modkill in either. How often do they happen and at what consistency are they handed out?
 
Verelios

Verelios

Member
Oct 26, 2017
14,877
IfGodCouldDie said:
I've played two games on resetera, I don't think I've seen a modkill in either. How often do they happen and at what consistency are they handed out?
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They're rare, and gamerunners usually won't modkill where they can warn because it's not fun to do for either party. Unless it's a game breaking infraction like directly quoting your role PM, and that seems to happen more frequently in bastard games.
 
FateShirou

FateShirou

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,090
"rare"
all three games i played in had someone get modkilled
even multiple in the same game!
 
Zippedpinhead

Zippedpinhead

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,748
I will say, I appreciated the time each game runner took to answer my questions after the games were completed. Especially MGS, but even knives out and among us I still had little questions and each runner helped by answering.

Overall, I had a fun season, hopefully not too much of a bother to other players. I tried out some new ways of playing, some that worked, and one that I'm not sure worked or not
 
Dr. Monkey

Dr. Monkey

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,029
They really are rare but sometimes you get a glut. When I ran my first game I had to modkill someone and it was the first time I'd ever even seen one.

But let's keep them rare and shocking!
 
lokiduck

lokiduck

The Fallen
Mar 27, 2019
9,126
Washington
Dr. Monkey said:
They really are rare but sometimes you get a glut. When I ran my first game I had to modkill someone and it was the first time I'd ever even seen one.

But let's keep them rare and shocking!
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Yeah I didn't know modkills were even a thing for a long time. Trying to remember the first time i saw one LOL. I saw replacements, but never really modkills.

I guess the first one was when Sorian was fake killed as a joke in Volcano Island. XD
 

turmoil7

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,181
I don't get the rationale behind making review threads private. Why? If there was a problem with public threads I missed it. I don't have something to add every time but still like to read them.

Regarding the modkills I think it should be advised gamerunners send new players something like this by PM:

Hi [player], thanks for joining us! In the past we have seen new players struggle understanding the rules of the game so we stress the following:
  • Do not quote verbatim your Role PM, entirely or partially, doing so will incur on a Modkill(immediate removal from the game). Paraphrasing should be fine in most cases
  • Respect players pronouns. You will find them listed in the first posts of the game thread. Failing to use correct pronouns will incur on warnings and modkills upon repeated offenses
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nin

nin

Asked Politely
Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
7,159
Highlight certain parts that get you modkilled.
That was the main "issue" I had. Like wee said though it's all human error though :p
 
Dr. Monkey

Dr. Monkey

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,029
Speaking of Knives Out, I did want to say it was really cool to play a game in which the characters were playing mafia. Such a simple thing but really crushed flavor spec.
 

Deleted member 19365

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,240
The need to set up an "important rules" section is a symptom of cluttering in our existing rules. But I think we already tried to make the rules as concise as possible? Maybe changing the order of the existing rules could help? #5 and #9 could go to the top?

Looking through the current rules again:
  • #7 second sentence and #18 are the same thing
  • I'd change #13 to "no backseat modding" (I think that's clear enough and includes all the explanation)
  • #9, #15 have the "first offense = warning, second offense = removal" sentences - there is room to remove redundancy
    • #11 is the outlier with two warnings and priority penalty (equaling the penalties would enable us to shorten it with the above as well?
  • #23 could go into "Game Behaviour"
  • I'm unsure if #24 needs to be written down, the mods usually ask about it anyway?
  • #25 should go into the fundamentals section, could also be handled with the same penalty as above
  • #26 is about priority - do we need this in the rules section? We haven't written down how the priority system works in our rules and I feel there is no need to do so. So it seems unnecessary to mention one singular aspect here.
  • #27 feels too formal for us, I think no one in our community will insist on "you didn't say that before, why should I give a shit? mAKe_mE" - I see why you included this, but I think it's unnecessary
Just my two cents.

Ah, highlighting certain parts like modkilling etc. is a good idea if used moderately.

Overall I feel ambivalent about giving new players additional input.
 
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Alexem

Alexem

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,335
Essex, UK
After the spate of unfortunate modkills that we've had this season, I think that anything that we can do to help to make things as clear as possible for newcomers from the get-go would be very helpful. Having a go-to reminder sheet that can be sent out to a first time player along with their role PM certainly sounds like a good idea, as does giving additional emphasis to role-specific conditions that could result in disqualification. Hopefully the recent run will have just been a blip, but it makes sense to be pro-active in keeping them from happening to start with.

With regards to review threads, I don't see anything wrong with keeping them open as standard myself. If a designer or reviewer would prefer a particular thread to be hidden then they should certainly have the option, but I think it's good for us to have a record of our design methodologies for future use. They would be of particular use for people who might be thinking of designing a game themselves for the first time and would like to get an idea of how the review process works, what they'll need to do to get a game drawn up and what sort of factors they'll need to consider when creating and balancing a game. Even for experienced creators, I expect it'd be useful to have a record of what has and hasn't been allowed and why, particularly when implementing unusual roles or mechanics - being able to take past designs into consideration and see how they developed as they were reviewed would certainly be helpful in working out what might or might not be workable.
 
Aeleus

Aeleus

Member
Nov 29, 2018
3,111
turmoil7 said:
I don't get the rationale behind making review threads private. Why? If there was a problem with public threads I missed it. I don't have something to add every time but still like to read them.

Regarding the modkills I think it should be advised gamerunners send new players something like this by PM:
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Some people want to have their role ideas which ended up being cut secret for possible use in future games.

Kopite said:
Re PMs, I think gamerunners hould specify in the opening posts in the scum/mason/lovers thread if we can quite our entire PM or not
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This is a good idea, at the very least I'll try and implement it in my games from now on.
 
Aeleus

Aeleus

Member
Nov 29, 2018
3,111
1. I'm fine with either opt in or opt out, as long as you're fine with seeing my salty mafia game design takes you're free to take any ideas I may not have used.
2. I think this is a good idea, I know it should be on the player for not reading the rules but we've definitely started having a problem and we need to fix it.
3. I'd suggest adding at least a general standard for how to handle modkills in PMs in the guide for reviewers thread in OM
 
FateShirou

FateShirou

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,090
some concerns

1) Would the stuff that happen behind the scenes leading up to a modkill be made public?

2) In larger games, scum tend to have an advantage, so my question is what is the win/lose rate for town in large and small games, and is there any correlation with early town modkills and town losing
 
Aeleus

Aeleus

Member
Nov 29, 2018
3,111
FateShirou said:
some concerns

1) Would the stuff that happen behind the scenes leading up to a modkill be made public?

2) In larger games, scum tend to have an advantage, so my question is what is the win/lose rate for town in large and small games, and is there any correlation with early town modkills and town losing
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1. They would not be made public
2. Looking at recent games, it seems town generally does better at larger games. Town has lost during these recent games with modkills but correlation doesn't mean causation (though I'd say a town modkill inherintly puts town at a disadvantage)
 
lokiduck

lokiduck

The Fallen
Mar 27, 2019
9,126
Washington
FateShirou said:
1) Would the stuff that happen behind the scenes leading up to a modkill be made public?
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Alexem said:
The details are usually not made specific when a player is DQ'd or gets replaced, just in case it gives away that they may have access to a chat thread on OM.
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As Alexem has said, they are not mentioned during the game. But if the game runners feel it needs to be addressed, they bring it up at the end of the game when it won't affect what happens gameplay wise.
 
Natiko

Natiko

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,263
Dr. Monkey said:
you will never stop me from backseat nodding
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Idk what you're talking about.

Neki said:
Ephidel and lokiduck tell me that mod kills are rare and I see two in the same game lol
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MGS was an outlier in that a role was created with an additional clause outside of the normal rules that could lead to a modkill. That's very much not the usual.

turmoil7 said:
I don't get the rationale behind making review threads private. Why? If there was a problem with public threads I missed it. I don't have something to add every time but still like to read them.

Regarding the modkills I think it should be advised gamerunners send new players something like this by PM:
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Because often times game designers may not keep all of the ideas they go into a thread with, and discuss pieces that may be used in other games instead. The Game Data sheet is still maintained and allows people to look over game designs for ideas/inspiration.

Fanto said:
You sure about that?
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I mean in the upcoming season!
 
OP
OP
Sawneeks

Sawneeks

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,845
Yuta I'll get to your post about the rules when I have a moment. That one will take me some more time to sit down and read through.

lokiduck said:
I fully support this. New players need the support they can get and having the most important rules be emphasized will definitely help them :D


I love this idea and definitely thing we should do it. I'll be sure to update all my future mentions of modkilling with emphasis to help follow the new rule.


Thank you for mentioning this as well. One thing I would like to add is maybe including a rule or request that players refrain from trying to get information based on mechanical stuff such as chat numbers?

Chats are usually done in such a way that it's easy for the game runners/OM staff to move players around, so having players trying and sus someone out via asking what their chat number is is :I

As far as I'm concerned chat numbers are not apart of the actual game and should not be factored in when solving but others may disagree with me on that.



👀
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I want to say that would fall under not pushing restrictions on a game buuuutttt I could see that being a problem. Hm, yeah, that's a weird one because I would also see it as part of solving the game unless the chats become more 'personalized' with different names instead of numbers.

MrHedin said:
Please add me to the permanent replacement list unless otherwise noted.
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Done, thank you!
Zippedpinhead said:
I think that the mod killing about role PM quoting needs to be defined.

obviously quoting your entire PM should be out. But what constitutes "breadcrumbs" and what constitutes "confirmation".

Case in point HP and I eventually (on our last day alive) figured out Natiko used the same joke in both our PMs and used it to soft confirm that at least we had the same death condition. That was considered crumbing but if we had figured it out day 1, a lot of our back and forth of frustration would have been cut out.

im Also for more unique names for chats, as Lokiduck said, I tried to game the system in fate/stay because each chat was numbered.
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That's a good point as well in terms of defining it. I'll see what the rule looks like and see if it can be tightened up at all without becoming too wordy.
weemadarthur said:
I have this feeling i missed a lot of drama About reading comprehension.

1. Switching default to private sounds fine, nobody outside the community wants to read them anyway presumably?
2. OK but all the rules are important and I thought the template already had "respect for others" in a separate section from "game termy rules". Anything that might help is great but this might turn out to be a human problem and not work to its purpose.
3. Sure. Templates are fun. But I've made JOKES about not reading my roles and they're just that, jokes. Players need to take some responsibility to get the information they need when they're confused. Most games, I converse with the gamerunner about what I may/may not do using examples that aren't directly applicable to the game so I am not begging for spoilers but can still understand how the role is likely to interact with other types of roles. And post restrictions/game specific rules that could result in modkill are *not that hard*.
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Yeahh that's kind of where I'm at too? We cut out/condensed a lot of the rules for the purpose of making it easier to read and we always recommend that people read all of it so they know what to do and what not to do. But on the flip side we have had a lot of modkills lately and they were never that common to begin with so it's a problem we're unsure how to address outside of making a quick "hey! new players please read!"
Zippedpinhead said:
Sawneeks how many games in the hopper are there?
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ccuurrrentlyyyy

5 games are ready to go and are the ones planned for next season. 9 games are in the process of being reviewed but some have been there for months or over a year.
Neki said:
We need to find more creative ways to get mod killed
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[stress intensifies]
Kopite said:
Re PMs, I think gamerunners hould specify in the opening posts in the scum/mason/lovers thread if we can quite our entire PM or not
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I think this is a good idea as well. Make it easier for people.
Aeleus said:
3. I'd suggest adding at least a general standard for how to handle modkills in PMs in the guide for reviewers thread in OM
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This is a great idea. Been mulling about how to make this role PM 'form' go out to others but that's a good place to put it.
 
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