Sanderson Elimination: Questions & Answers and Game Meta Discussion

[StrikerEZ he/him]

1 minute ago, Megasif said:

Btw, have we not got a discord channel?

We do, in fact.

https://discord.gg/xuMqRD

[Megasif he/him]

16 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

We do, in fact.

https://discord.gg/xuMqRD

Oh thanks. I was expecting a channel on the 17th shard server. All this time. Sigh.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

2 minutes ago, Megasif said:

Oh thanks. I was expecting a channel on the 17th shard server. All this time. Sigh.

You're welcome! And it's fine lol

[little wilson she/her]

Quote

The question at hand is: How do we ensure a forum that is fun for everyone?

What are you trying to get out of an SE game, to the point that it's no fun if it's not absent?

I think the question at the heart of this discussion is rather “To what extent should games be competitive?” You also suggest that we should have rules in place to control the behavior of players, which I disagree with vehemently.

I’m pretty sure I’ve answered the question, but just in case that’s unclear, let me reiterate. I do not think the focus of these games should be on competition and winning. It should be on fun, camaraderie, and the community.
 

As for the second part, I already mentioned that the moderator team generally prefers a hands-off policy for most things. We believe that it’s better for the players to influence and change the metagame than for rules to force a change in the metagame. When the players bring about the change, it’s more likely to last, but rules not only limit player choices, but they also tend to be irritating from a player point of view, in having restrictions. Additionally, it’s difficult to enforce in grey areas, and even in the black/white, it can take a lot of work.

The moderator team has three people on it, and all three of us are busy. We are also volunteers. While moderating the games is important for us, there are many other things that are just as important or more important in our lives that we have to deal with first. Like paying jobs or our mental health.

As Meta already mentioned, the General Rules and Etiquette Policy should be more than enough to direct players in what is acceptable. The fewer additional rules we have to enforce to make the games run smoothly, the better things will be.

 

Also, the question you say we should be answering implies that we’re not already making the games fun. But why would people sign up and continue to play at all if they didn’t find the games fun? All of our regular players are ones that don’t prioritize competition, so clearly competition isn’t the driving motivator to play SE.

Yitzi, why do you think controlling players’ playstyles, and therefore limiting their options, will make the games more enjoyable?
 

Speaking of control, let’s move onto mayors/dictators. There is a difference between a leader of a village and a dictator. Not all leaders are dictators. A leader who listens to other ideas, giving people information they need to make decisions, while giving suggestions for role actions, but ultimately letting each individual player play how they want to play is not a dictator. That is not a mayor. A dictator is someone who controls the village. Someone who expects everyone to roleclaim to them, listens to no one except their small cabal of trusted players, and threatens other players with death if they don’t follow them exactly.

LG4 had a dictatorship. In one cycle, one of the players crucial to the village died, but there was a role, the Returned, who could sacrifice themselves to bring a very recently deceased player back (they learned the list of the dead 12 hours before the end of the night). The Returned in the dictator’s cabal threatened another Returned with death if he didn’t sacrifice himself for that crucial villager. So he did. Because either way, he was going to die.

 

Moving on. Rand’s post reminded me of something that I think bears mentioning here, since it answers more about competitively-geared playstyles.

I recently drafted Magic: the Gathering with Brandon Sanderson and six other people. Magic can be a very competitive game, but Magic with Brandon is very casual. Now, I haven’t played Magic for a good year, and I’m novice anyway, so I was pretty fuzzy on some of the rules, like if you look at your hand, you’ve basically said that you’re going first. Usually, this wouldn’t matter at all at Magic with Brandon, but one of the people there was very rules-based. He was also very loud about the rules. This is not how things generally are there, even though that’s how most Magic players would be when playing.

Additionally, I have this irrational fear of playing Brandon in Magic, because I know he’s very good and like I said - I’m very novice. I worry that when he whoops me, I’ll have made an utter fool of myself, and he’ll think I’m an idiot - which would be the case if he were a generic Magic player. However, if Brandon plays and beats a novice, he takes a look at their deck, helps them fix it, and then gives them pointers to improve not only their general Magic play but also their game with that specific deck. He will never be like “You sucked,” and move onto the next person.

Just because a game is generally seen as competitive doesn’t mean it always has to be played competitively. I personally feel like that casual play Brandon does with Magic is kind of the perfect example of how we should play mafia.

 

Also, the problem isn’t one person playing over-competitively. It’s players in aggregate playing competitively. If it were only a single player, that one person is unlikely to have a large impact on the metagame, even if they’re being super competitive. But take a number of players all playing competitively - even if it’s not strongly so - and they will have a significantly bigger impact on the overall tone of the games. It’s like when I was trying to fix the metagame by myself a year ago and wasn’t having any kind of impact, but when 4-5 of us all joined efforts for the same goal, we made progress and things got better.

I do not remotely believe we should cater SE around people who wish to play competitively, or group “suboptimal” players differently. Also, I don’t like calling players who prioritize fun (however they define that) “suboptimal.” They may be playing suboptimally from a competitive standpoint, but that does not make them suboptimal. Fun would be a better term. Fun players vs Competitive players. Our goal here in SE isn’t to play competitively. It’s to play a fun game of mafia with our friends, because killing friends is fun.

I’d like to reiterate once again that if the games did become that competitive sanctuary some of you seem to want, they’d be shut down. You would no longer be able to play competitively here because there would be no more games to play. If you want ultra-competitive play, go to Mafia Universe, Epic Mafia, Town of Salem, or really almost any other mafia site. There are more than enough to choose from. This forum is a haven of civility and tolerance, where the members care about each other, and it would be a real shame if those of us who enjoy being Gentleman Killers were suddenly unable to play.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

If by competitive play you mean putting winning over fun, I wholeheartedly agree that we should discourage such behavior.

The point of any competition should ultimately be to have fun. So if competition doesn't produce fun, it's kind of pointless.

[little wilson she/her]

2 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

If by competitive play you mean putting winning over fun, I wholeheartedly agree that we should discourage such behavior.

The point of any competition should ultimately be to have fun. So if competition doesn't produce fun, it's kind of pointless.

Winning over fun and also encouraging optimal play from all players.

Magic: the Gathering has specific archetyes I think work well to show exactly what I mean. There are three basic types of players: Timmy, Johnny and Spike.

Timmy plays to have fun. He likes things to be interesting and the game is less about the win than it is about how the win came about (note: I actually like this description of Timmy better than the other one, but the other one is at least a start).

Johnny likes combos. He likes gambits and messing with the rules. He plays to get creative with the game.

Spike plays to win. He plays to compete. He cares very much about if he's winning or if he's losing and that factors into his ability to have fun.

My post isn't trying to say that we prefer Timmy and Johnny's and Spikes can just play elsewhere. On the contrary, we have a number of long-term Spike players. There's nothing wrong with Spike. The issue is when Spike players try to get non-Spike players to be a Spike. That's the whole bit with "optimal" play. Spike is really the only one that cares about optimal play in terms of winning. Timmy and Johnny have other ideas of what is optimal play, because it's different for them.

This is why we don't want to ban any specific play style because some people are able to play them in a way that's perfectly fine for this forum, because they're not trying to pressure everyone else to play like them. And that's the important bit: play how you want (within the forum/subforum rules) but don't try to push for your playstyle above others. Let everyone else play how they want to as well, even if that doesn't include as much of a focus on winning as you might like.

[Steeldancer he/him]

Has there ever been a game where the GM seriously messed with all the players? 

[Elenion he/him]

28 minutes ago, Flash said:

Has there ever been a game where the GM seriously messed with all the players? 

Hmmm... yes, I'd say so. Read up on MR20 and see if you count Joe's moves as messing with the players.

[Haelbarde he/him]

I mean, during sign ups for my first game, I gave everyone a secret kill role, which let them kill someone before the game started, just to see what people did with it.

[Elbereth she/her]

(It should be clarified that that is normally a horrible idea and that everyone who died was resurrected in the first writeup. It was entertaining, though. )

Edited August 2, 2017 by Elbereth

[A Joe in the Bush]

3 minutes ago, Elenion said:

Hmmm... yes, I'd say so. Read up on MR20 and see if you count Joe's moves as messing with the players.

Honestly, read any of my games and see if I'm messing with people?

[Haelbarde he/him]

Yeah, as elbereth said, it didn't actually effect the game, and it made for an interesting dream sequence for the opening writeup.

And yes, read all Joe's games

[Seonid he/him]

I concur. If Joe is the GM,  players are getting messed with.  When you run a game where you can vote and lynch the GM and the mods, with in-game consequences, I think the threshold of troll GM has been passed. 

Of course,  his games are consistently fun.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

1 hour ago, Seonid said:

I concur. If Joe is the GM,  players are getting messed with.  When you run a game where you can vote and lynch the GM and the mods, with in-game consequences, I think the threshold of troll GM has been passed. 

Of course,  his games are consistently fun.

What about games in which you can place an action order to sue the GM 

[Elbereth she/her]

If you're referring to LG36, yes, but that didn't have ingame consequences.  Killing the GM and the mods in QF14 literally made everyone die and no one win because the people of Luthadel rioted and anarchy reigned. 

It was fun.  

[Seonid he/him]

2 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

If you're referring to LG36, yes, but that didn't have ingame consequences.  Killing the GM and the mods in QF14 literally made everyone die and no one win because the people of Luthadel rioted and anarchy reigned. 

It was fun.  

Yep. Even from the spec doc

Of course, then there was the recent Alcatraz QF, in which the GM was a marriageable character with a unique Smedry talent. That nobody figured out and so nobody took advantage of. But it was there and it was cool, and it would so totally not fly in other mafia forums and I love SE for it!

[Amanuensis he/him]

3 hours ago, Elbereth said:

 

If you're referring to LG36, yes, but that didn't have ingame consequences.  Killing the GM and the mods in QF14 literally made everyone die and no one win because the people of Luthadel rioted and anarchy reigned. 

I wonder how that happened...

[Steeldancer he/him]

17 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

Honestly, read any of my games and see if I'm messing with people?

HAHAHAHA QF14 OH I LAUGHED SO HARD!

You have inspired me... I now have some very fun ideas. 

[the winter system]

This discussion on troll GMs inspires me.

[Amanuensis he/him]

A while ago I was asked to give me thoughts on this discussion about competition and never got around to it, so I'll offer my perspective now that I've got some time.

Personally I don't believe there is anything inherently wrong with playing these games to win. I may be biased since my biggest motivation is victory nine-games-out-of-ten, but that's besides the point. The issue I feel is when decisions are made without first considering how your words and actions could effect others. My philosophy on this has a lot to do with my general philosophy about life. I believe that all conflict in the world can be broken down to a person being unwilling to accommodate another in some way; in putting their own interests above anyone and anything else's.

I used to have a lot of trouble with this starting off. A great example of this is a situation involving Orlok and myself in LG23: The Siege of Luthadel. In that game, on the second day, I felt I was being unfairly targeted because I was accumulating votes for no other reason than people considering me a threat. Several players had it in their heads that if I was kept alive, their factions would lose, and thus allied together to get me killed. I reacted very negatively to this because (it being my first faction game) I think it's ridiculous to lynch a villager out of paranoia alone. That and I was genuinely trying to make sure that every faction worked together to eliminate the true threat (the eliminators). As a result, I decided to lie about Seeking my biggest suspicion, Orlok, and finding that he was Spiked, only to save my own skin without ever considering how that would make him feel, especially since it turned out I was wrong.

Having seen his reaction in the dead doc after my eventual lynch, I realized the error of my ways. I put my survival over the fun of another player, and that was wrong, even if the reasoning for people voting for me were wrong, too.

Had people put themselves in my shoes, or if I had put myself in Orlok's, I believe that game would have been a lot more fun for everyone. In the end, I think that no matter what reason people play these games for, so long as they don't dismiss others and try to empathize with their perspective, we can all have a great time. This aligns perfectly with the concept of not forcing others to play the way you want. I understand how it can be frustrating when someone on your team isn't playing optimally, but I've come to find that something like that can easily be worked around. Rather than antagonize, just try to start a conversation with them. Figure out what they're thinking first before you make any judgments, and even if you come to the conclusion that they are evil, treat them with respect (this applies to any situation when you're pushing someones lynch, too). And more importantly then not participating in arguments yourself, don't sit on the sides lines and say nothing if you see one developing. I think as long as everyone follows this advice, it doesn't matter what your goal is with playing these games.

Be altruistic, always, not just in these games, but in real life too. It honestly couldn't be any simpler.

Edited August 6, 2017 by Amanuensis

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

On 05/08/2017 at 7:01 PM, Amanuensis said:

I understand how it can be frustrating when someone on your team isn't playing optimally,

*cough, LG28 :), shoutout to the elims I didn't end up killing.

[Arinian]

6 hours ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

*cough, LG28 :), shoutout to the elims I didn't end up killing.

I almost decided to kill you 

[Steeldancer he/him]

Hey I'm curious when the AG runs. Is it at the end of the year?

[little wilson she/her]

Just now, Flash said:

Hey I'm curious when the AG runs. Is it at the end of the year?

The AG starts end December/beginning of January.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

On 07/08/2017 at 11:58 PM, little wilson said:

The AG starts end December/beginning of January.

maybe this time I'll be around to play it!