Playing and Hosting Guides Survey

[Feralize]

Hello War Room regulars!

The War Room Staff will be revamping the Hosting and Playing Guides in the near future. We'd appreciate it if you could take the time to answer these survey questions. Your answers will be considered when revamping the guides.

1. What would you like to see in the revamped Hosting Guide?

2. What would you like to see in the revamped Playing Guide?

3. Are there any roles or role variations that you'd like to see included?

4. Are there any Open or Semi-Open setups that you'd like to see included?

5. Do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

-War Room Staff

 

[Almonds]

1. What would you like to see in the revamped Hosting Guide?
Nothing much. But it would be appreciated if there was some sample examples on what is a good balance for a game. Even if the mafia:town ratio is 1:3, there are roles and abilities to think about. What sort of role counts for 2 townies? what role counts as an extra mafia member?

2. What would you like to see in the revamped Playing Guide?
Making the guide a bit more shorter. I think putting only the most important, necessary method of playing would suffice. The rest the new-comers can learn as they play the games. There are always the host and other players they can ask the games about.

3. Are there any roles or role variations that you'd like to see included?
I looked up EpicMafia. Wiki, and there was a surprising amount of roles that would be pretty awesome to implement. Of course, most of them are time based, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to make them work in the threads here. I like the idea of the Santa, btw.

4. Are there any Open or Semi-Open setups that you'd like to see included?
Not sure about this. I don't really care.

5. Do you have any other suggestions?
N/A

 

[HumanDawn]

@Mutie;

Will a new thread be made for it?

 

[KidBeano]

Bear in mind I'm not familiar with the current guides, so I might say stuff that's already in one or the other.

1. What would you like to see in the revamped Hosting Guide?
First things first should be Dos and Don'ts. Do feel free to ask a mod if a situation arises and you're not sure what to do. Don't favour one side over the other due to pre-existing friendships etc.... Stuff like that.
Icr the specifics, but remember that time when a host completely changed one of the roles because the mafia were walking all over the town? Something should just be said that fairness to both alignments should come before personal wants. If a host is upset their game turned into a whitewash due to no fault of their own, they should suck it up and run the game how it was planned.

2. What would you like to see in the revamped Playing Guide?
Update the vocab list. I'm actually a little shocked MYLO and LYLO aren't on there - they should be the kinds of things that should be second nature. Idk if WIFOM is in there, but quite a few people don't seem to understand that concept and so that should be included.
Something encouraging thoughtful insight. "I don't know." "He seems scummy but I'm not sure." "I agree with the person above." really aren't helpful at all.

EDIT: Went through the vocab list and put what jumped out at me as "should be in there". This is assuming a separate roles list gets added and so all the roles in their would be taken out.

Spoiler

Bandwagon - should probably specify that it's a stream of votes (i.e. usually one after the other)
Day Phase
FOS/FoS
Host
LYLO - stands for Lynch or Lose. A situation wherein the non-mafia only outnumber the mafia by 1. So, if the town choose to No Lynch, the mafia kill the next night will cause the town to lose. A LYLO situation is also inherently a MYLO situation, and is arguably the worst position a town can find themselves in.
Mafia - could possibly reference that a single mafia member is sometimes referred to as a mafioso
MYLO - stands for Mislynch and Lose. A situation wherein the non-mafia only outnumber the mafia by 2. So, if the town lynch a non-mafia, the mafia kill the next night will cause the town to lose.
Night Phase
OMGUS - stands for Oh My God You Suck. A situation wherein Person A votes for Person B with sound reasoning, and Person B responds with no reasoning, or their reasoning being "You voted for me so you are scummy". Usually, Person B is inexperienced and cannot grasp the concept that while they know they are clear to themselves, they are not confirmed to anyone else. Named after a 'typical response' from B.
QT - could link to QuickTopic.com
Town - could possibly reference that a single town member is sometimes referred to as a townie
WIFOM - stands for Wine In Front Of Me. A bluff/double-bluff argument which cannot resolve. The core idea of WIFOM is judging the actions of one person when that person knows what others expect them to do. It usually starts when something is viewed as being "too obvious". For a more in-depth definition and examples, check http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=WIFOM

3. Are there any roles or role variations that you'd like to see included?
4. Are there any Open or Semi-Open setups that you'd like to see included?

I'm not quite sure what these two are asking - do you mean there will be a list of suggested/common roles and setups?

5. Do you have any other suggestions?
Not really.

 

[FinalArcadia]

1. What would you like to see in the revamped Hosting Guide?
Having rough estimates for town:mafia ratios would probably be helpful, something maybe showing "if you have a range of this many townies, generally X amount of mafia is balanced."

Also, I think that first-time hosts might have trouble determining when a game has reached the endgame sometimes, so perhaps giving some examples of when it would be impossible for town to win could help. Or different ways to word the mafia win condition for different effects.

Aside from that, I think the guide currently provides most everything that's important.

2. What would you like to see in the revamped Playing Guide?
To clarify that when people say to roleclaim, they actually mean something more like an ability claim. The wording could probably be confusing to new players, so it might be beneficial to them to see that you are generally allowed to claim your ability in such cases, but almost always it is not allowed to reveal your character or actual pieces of your role PM description.

Stressing to always play to your win condition is important too, but other than those things, the current guide seems to cover everything.

3. Are there any roles or role variations that you'd like to see included?
Some of the role modifiers like "Ascetic" and "Compulsive" and things like that could be nice in a category, to give hosts some more potential ideas for abilities. And perhaps categorizing roles into things like "Protective," "Investigative," etc. would be helpful.

4. Are there any Open or Semi-Open setups that you'd like to see included?
Can't really think of any.

5. Do you have any other suggestions?
Like KidBeano said, updating the glossary of terms is good, since there are some missing that he pointed out and some that may not need to be there.

 

[Feralize]

Will a new thread be made for it?

Yes.

 

[Mijzelffan]

Well one thing that kinda bothers me about the current guide is the length, with everything combined it's ~12000 words long. That's as long as the 32-page paper I had to write this semester, and takes quite a while to read entirely. Not sure how much shorter it could be without removing too much essential stuff though.


In the hosting guide only thing I can think of is that I think the whole Timing section seems kinda pointless. I'd say almost every activity high point in 2012 was an activity low point in 2011 and vice versa, I think only the summer was active for both, so trying to guess what times will be active doesn't really work.


In the playing guide there are some things I'd like to see go:

"Lying low helps you survive as Mafia or Innocent." that promotes inactivity and isn't even true

"Trust nothing but your instinct." in mafia your instinct should always come second to more substantial evidence

"Players should consider what they are good at and what they are known for. Players should generally play to their strengths." that encourages meta and discourages people from trying out new playstyles.

And the extreme biasedness to alliances like "Cooperation is also a low risk option" and "Alliances are beneficial for everybody." while making one unfortunate alliance can wipe out your entire faction with a little bad luck and is certainly not as risk-free as the guide implies.


In the glossary I suggest having jester changed to fool, it's the more common term on bulba. Yakuza/converter, rolecop, lawyer and bodyguard seem like roles worth to be added. Also adding standard mafia terms like wifom, mylo, lylo, no lynch, etc. is something I suggest.


As for any other suggestions, I'd like to suggest cutting down on stickies. Personally I think any amount of stickies over 6 gets kinda intrustive. Maybe the mafia and non-mafia indexes could be merged? It's not like we get that many non-mafia games anwyay. The anti-bullying policy also seems like it could be merged with the rules and etiquette.

 

[CrackFox]

On the whole the current guide is pretty good. It's quite basic in terms of roles. When I first read the guide I was underwhelmed by the amount of cool roles. I'd definitely add more or even link role lists from sites like Epicmafia. Actually the Epic mafia wiki is great, it should definitely be linked too Link. It has a some great introductory guides which you could potentially take some ideas from.

It would also be useful to have a paragraph dedicated to the subject of balancing your roles fairly and emphasising the dangers of OP factions, something which isn't really addressed at the minute. If there is a mod or mentor who is particularly good when it comes to balancing roles, link to them so the host can be given advice in that area, if needed.

I don't think that the guide really needs to be rewriten just because it's a few years old, a few things added would be enough to make it brilliantly informative.