The Round Table

[Maniacal Engineer]

Basic Rules of the Mentor Queue:

1. The game can be any sort of game, be it small, large, or undetermined setup.
2. The game must be involved with the mentoring program in some way, shape, or form. (Mentors can be players, mentors can guide players, the Lovers Mafia idea, etc.)
3. For the moment, student/mentor pairings will be determined after signups are complete.
4. People are allowed to signup as students or mentors for these games. They cannot sign up as both.
5. This queue is for mentoring players only. Games where the host will be mentored or mentoring are to be included in the "regular" queues.
6. In accordance with 5, all hosts who wish to host a mentor game must be experienced hosts. This ensures a stable and secure stage for students to learn.
7. Signups work just like for the "regular" queues.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

The Mentor Program Signup and Contact List has been open for nearly two weeks now, so I figured it was time to take an inventory of our current status.
By my list, which is current as of Slife's post, we have:
8 Player Mentors and 14 Player Students.
11 Hosting Students and 9 Hosting Mentors.

As I anticipated, the mentor:student ratio is not 1:1, which, while it would have been ideal, was not realistic at this time. Nonetheless, this should not daunt us moving forward, as we will merely have to adapt.

Now then, onto more pressing matters. As you all are aware by now, the Hosting Queue has begun, and we will very shortly be inaugurating the start of this endeavor with Ice Cream Mafia hosted primarily by our very own Enzap, with myself in a secondary and mostly advisory position.
This will be the first mentor game hosted under the auspices of this initiative, and will work, essentially, as follows:
1. Players and mentors will sign up to participate in that game.
2. Once signups are closed, we will determine what the specific ratio of mentor:student is in that game.
3. From there, we will select mentor-student pairings based on both the roles that the students received and the particular or preferred skill sets of the mentors. Mentor assignments will not be randomized.

The reason that we don't want to randomize the mentor-student pairings is because, as expressed in their bios or their signup posts, certain mentors are better at playing as specific alignments. In order to benefit the students the most, we will try to have all of the mentors teach the alignment that they are most adept at. For example, I would be assigned to a mafia player, while Zexy would be assigned to a town player. This does not mean that, for example, I would never be assigned to a town player, but we would assign the town players all of the town mentors beforehand.
Now then, this does mean that mentors are, or at least can be, a decent indication of alignment. As such, the mentor-student pairings will not be made public, the students will be made aware of who their mentor is in their respective role PMs. This also does make things slightly difficult, as far as OC games are concerned, since mentors will not be addable to those conversations without potentially giving away alignments. To that end, it is highly encouraged that, should the students participate in OC, that they keep their mentors apprised of what is transpiring in said OC conversations. This encourages the students to be more "active" regarding their learning, as it is something that requires their direct involvement and communication.
Assuming there isn't a 1:1 mentor:student ratio, which is usually most likely going to be the case, we may assign multiple students to the same mentor, but never of different alignments. Naturally, so as to avoid giving away extraneous information, the mafia members will sooner share a mentor than multiple town members, to avoid as much potential game compromising as possible.
The idea, at least for the moment, is that all mentor games will work similar to this.

In addition to this, AussieEevee and I decided to make Fruit Bowl Mafia 2 into a hosting mentor game. In this instance, the game is being hosted by the mentor, namely myself, and users were allowed to sign up as hosting students. Each hosting student is then given access to all hosting conversations as well as all of the "behind the scenes" conversations that occur throughout the game, namely role PMs, host provided OCs, player OCs, and so forth.
The students are permitted to ask the host any and all questions related to the ongoing events in that game, the mentor's hosting strategies, and other relevant topics. In turn, the mentor is expected to reply to said questions, and is encouraged to explain their hosting process and any and all changes they choose to make during the setup, and anything else they feel may be useful information for their students.
In the case of host mentoring, mentor:student ratio is not as crucial, though it is still advisable that the "class" size be kept relatively small, so as not to overwhelm the host. As an aside, in case some of y'all did not already know this, there is a 20 user limit to PM conversations here on Bulba. I believe Discord also has a limit to the number of allowable users in a DM conversation, but I do not know that number off the top of my head.

If y'all have any questions regarding either of these two games, or any other input regarding the mentor program, please let me know. There are a few other ideas in the development phase right now, and I will be sure to let you all know what those entail once they've been fleshed out a bit more.

 

[DarthWolf]

Hey guys, the staff has been discussing the game queue recently and it seems to have a few flaws.

The most notable one has been the regulation of active games.
We see this as a problem as we have a limited amount of players who aren't going to fill up all games. This would lead to some games having to be canceled.
If people do decide to sign up to multiple game, we noticed that the activity level in each game drops. Having to spread yourself thin over multiple games can be too much too some people. Subbing out for a replacement sometimes helps, but that isn't the preferred way to solve this.

It it clear that TWR users are willing to help out with problems that involve them. A lot of users helped out with rewriting the playing and hosting guide.
Now we would like to ask you to give us your thoughts on how we could improve the regulation of active games and the queue in general.

We would like to remind you that you aren't obligated to help out with this matter.
If you have any ideas and would like to help us out then please contact me here on the forum or on discord.

 

[SoaringDylan]

Attention to all members of TWR!

As you might have known already, there will be some new rules in play for the queues.
Allow me to introduce them to you.

• First of all, we will now only have 3 active queues. Small Mafia Games, Large Mafia Games and Non-Mafia Games.
• The Mentor Games are still a thing. However, these games will now be part of their respective Large or Small queue. Instead they will get a [MENTOR] tag behind the game in the queue list.
• The Small Mafia queue is for games up to 13 players, while the Large Mafia queue is for 14+ players.
• There can be up to 2 mafia games ongoing at any given time. This can be one Small and one Large game or 2 of the same size. The same goes for Non-Mafia games, up to 2 games may be ongoing at any given time.
• Each queue can only have up to 1 game in sign-ups at any given time.
• The normal sign-up duration for Small and Non-Mafia are 20 days. The normal duration for Large is 30 days. If there is no slot in ongoing games available yet, the games in sign up get extra time until a spot opens up.
  If a game does not fill up in time then the host(s) and the mod shall discuss what happens to the game.
• When a slot opens in ongoing games, the first game that entered sign-ups and is also ready to may move to ongoing and start the game.
• We still have a Special Games queue, but it has a few changes.
  • When someone requests to put a game in the Special Games queue it will first be discussed by TWR staff if it is allowed to enter that queue.
  • A special game will count towards the sign-ups limit. Because of this, the host must give a desired date to start the sign-ups. We will then add the game to the sign-ups when a spot opens up roughly around that date.
  • Once a special game is ready, it will take the next spot available in Ongoing Games.
• Each host can only have 1 game in each queue. Cohosting won’t be discouraged, if at least one of the hosts doesn’t have another game in the queue then the game may be added. Special Games do not count toward the hosting limit.
• In order to make sure that the queue runs as smoothly as possible, for the benefit of both the players and the hosts, we are requesting the following:
  • To enter the queue the game setup must be ready. This means that all roles and rules are made. The assigned MoD will check if the setup is complete and shall add it to the queue.
    • You are of course still allowed to make edits, or even change the complete setup at this point. The MoD just wants to see if you have something that is playable, in the case of the game being ready for signups.
  • To enter sign-ups all role PMs must be made and the game must be ready to start. Again, the assigned MoD will check this before your game moves to signups.

Due to changes in the Small and Large game size, the following games have been moved to Large:

Spoiler

- Hunter x Hunter: Battle In Yorknew City [15p] (Hosted by @jdthebud ) [locked in place]
- Digi-Mafia Adventure [15p] (Hosted by @Lone_Garurumon ) [Moderator On Duty: Lone_Garurumon] [locked in place]
- Kirby Reverse Mafia [15p] (Hosted by @returnofMCH and @Pikochu ) [locked in place]
- 90s Game Mafia [15p] (Hosted by @returnofMCH and @Rainbow Cloud )
- Star Trek Mafia [15p] (Hosted by @Zachie) [Moderator on Duty: SoaringDylan]
- The War Room Awards '17 Mafia [15p] (Hosted by @DarthWolf ) [Moderator on Duty: DarthWolf]

All the Mentor games have been moved to Small Mafia Games. These include:

Spoiler

- Mareep and Lycanroc Mafia [??p] (Hosted by @Midorikawa ) [locked in place]
- Roll Your Role Mafia [9p] (Hosted by @Elieson ) [locked in place]
- MCH's Simple Role PM Exercise [8p] (Hosted by @returnofMCH ) [locked in place]

These changes have no impact on the hosting limit so nothing needs to be removed.

To celebrate these new rules. We also have a shiny new thread!

If you have any questions regarding these changes, feel free to ask any of the TWR mods.