J-man
Deity
^If we all send our IM logs to the GM, the GM can expect a LOT of files...
NOTW XXIX: Hired Swords (signup thread)
- Thread starter PaulusIII
- Start date
PaulusIII
Unholy Warlord
IMPORTANT: Due to the rule of mandatory voting being criticized as being ineffective in the problem it's trying to solve (namely inactives), it has been scrapped entirely.
Now to think of another solution!
Now to think of another solution!
Askthepizzaguy
Know the Dark Side
Methinks simply telling the host "present" in private be a mighty fine solution...
crowd: Yeah, that guy is right, yeah! I agree!
crowd: Yeah, that guy is right, yeah! I agree!
J-man
Deity
Perhaps all the players need to create 'peer pressure' to force activity, voting and RP'ing.
Perhaps some sort of list can be published during updates (or less frequently) that list how many times players have voted and how active they have been.
If there are players that are repeatedly inactive, they may get banned from the next NotW.
Perhaps some sort of list can be published during updates (or less frequently) that list how many times players have voted and how active they have been.
If there are players that are repeatedly inactive, they may get banned from the next NotW.
J-man
Deity
For future NotW's, maybe the size should be smaller? It's easier to recognize inactives when amount of players is smaller. It's also easier to be active (less players to contact, less posts to read etc.)
Backwards Logic
Emperor Palpatine
As Renata said, this is not always a sound tactic. Players shouldn't be 'bullied' to play a certain way and this can lead to some rather unpleasant scenarios. I also don't see how it's in the spirit of the game to accuse someone just because they haven't voted. Players should have choice with how they play - I mean, that's half the fun with these games. Just because they don't abide by a certain set of in-thread activity standards is no reason to call them out, especially if they are active behind the scenes.
Well, we already have a voting list that goes with every update and I think that works fine. Another list with an activity count is not necessary and in my view a bit skewed. What's the definition of activity, and where's the cutoff point for someone who's active versus inactive? There's a lot of gray area here. One player's inactivity could be another player's activity. This is not a can of worms that I think should be opened.
The other opinion I have on this is the GM should not in any way be influencing the player's vote patterns. With the recent 'kill the inactives' movement that's been popular lately, a GM posting who's inactive is going to paint a bullseye on said player(s). Is that fair to them? Granted, it sucks they're on this list on the first place, but I think the players do a good enough job on their own lynching inactives without outside interference from the GM.
Now this I can agree with, but it should be a GM to GM decision. I know I have a small list of players that will not be playing in my next game if they asked to join. Yea, it's brutal, but you know what? I'm not risking letting someone historically inactive/disruptive unbalance the game or distract everyone from the game's real aim, especially considering the amount of planning, time, and thought these games take to design and run.
I don't think size of the game is the issue here. Whether there's 20 or 40 players, there's always going to be a few inactive players. As I've said before the active players already put enough pressure on the quiet ones, especially during the opening days. And I disagree with smaller sizes make individual activity easier. Pretty much everyone here uses MSN for these games and the ones that don't have PM's available. Even if a player only gets in touch with a half-dozen players, it becomes known to the others one way or the other that that player is in fact active. As much as no one likes to admit, info travels pretty quickly through these games, especially when it comes to who's active and who hasn't been.
Yeah, but BL, you're sort of contradicting yourself there. Well, not really, but contradicting the point of the game, in a way. The thing about inactive players and non-voting players is that they give innocents nothing to go on in determining their guilt or innocence. No in-thread goofs where they say the wrong thing. No record of always voting with their wolf partner, or tending to vote in non-controversial ways, or always hopping on bandwagons, nothing. You said it yourself: you got in trouble in the Mafia game *because* you were forced to vote -- it's a HUGE tool for the innocents to use. Take that away by letting things lapse to the point where no one is even looked at strange for not voting and half the players never bother, and what's left? Only prophets. And isn't that one of the things people tend to complain about, that prophet cabals run all the games? Failing to strongly encourage voting and participation will only force GMs to add even more prophet abilities to compensate.
We've been extraordinarily lucky lately in terms of how well the prophets have done, but it's pretty obvious what happens when for whatever reason they are neutralized. Go way back to my game: prophets self-destructed, and wolves won almost flawlessly. Or yours: most trusted prophet was a wolf; innocents got clobbered.
There has to be some kind of balance. And maybe mod-enforced voting is not the way to go, I don't know, but neither do I think we can just look the other way and let a third or more of the players never engage in what is really the heart of the game (the vote), as has been known to happen.
We've been extraordinarily lucky lately in terms of how well the prophets have done, but it's pretty obvious what happens when for whatever reason they are neutralized. Go way back to my game: prophets self-destructed, and wolves won almost flawlessly. Or yours: most trusted prophet was a wolf; innocents got clobbered.
There has to be some kind of balance. And maybe mod-enforced voting is not the way to go, I don't know, but neither do I think we can just look the other way and let a third or more of the players never engage in what is really the heart of the game (the vote), as has been known to happen.
Askthepizzaguy
Know the Dark Side
I love this debate, btw.
I'm perhaps the most fervently anti-lurker player out there. For a while, my MSN message read "Death to the lurkers". However, even I agree that lurking is a valid tactic that should be allowed. I agree that those who aren't actually playing should be tossed out on their butts by the GM, and that could be accomplished by simply having the active players converse and vote in-thread, and the lurking players signal to the GM that they are still playing. The actually inactive players can get replaced or canned, and the game should proceed as normally as all the ones down at the .org do. There were plenty of lurkers who didn't get thrown out in Capo III, and of the ones that we lynched or killed at night, most of them were mafia.
It's really up to the players to decide whether lynching lurkers is always the best policy, because sometimes it is a prophet or townie power role, and sometimes it's a mafia/werewolf, and sometimes it's a regular townie who might be trying to be murder bait. All are valid strategies. The only people who should actually get replaced are the verifiably inactive ones. Leave it up to the innocents to decide whether or not to start taking shots at the inactives, and hope they don't hit a prophet or waste a lynch.
*still campaigning for my "present" idea....
I'm perhaps the most fervently anti-lurker player out there. For a while, my MSN message read "Death to the lurkers". However, even I agree that lurking is a valid tactic that should be allowed. I agree that those who aren't actually playing should be tossed out on their butts by the GM, and that could be accomplished by simply having the active players converse and vote in-thread, and the lurking players signal to the GM that they are still playing. The actually inactive players can get replaced or canned, and the game should proceed as normally as all the ones down at the .org do. There were plenty of lurkers who didn't get thrown out in Capo III, and of the ones that we lynched or killed at night, most of them were mafia.
It's really up to the players to decide whether lynching lurkers is always the best policy, because sometimes it is a prophet or townie power role, and sometimes it's a mafia/werewolf, and sometimes it's a regular townie who might be trying to be murder bait. All are valid strategies. The only people who should actually get replaced are the verifiably inactive ones. Leave it up to the innocents to decide whether or not to start taking shots at the inactives, and hope they don't hit a prophet or waste a lynch.
*still campaigning for my "present" idea....
Backwards Logic
Emperor Palpatine
The thing with voting patterns is that the players are smart enough to realize that 1) they can be manipulated and 2) the bad guys know this and will go out of their way to erase any connection to each other. Now a days, voting patterns are no longer as useful not because no one votes but because of how the games are constructed.
Early on (before my time) voting patterns were the main evidence for the innocents. Hell, I think I recall seeing somewhere that in one of the first games all of the wolves supported each other and when one got caught the rest had a date with the gallows soon afterward. After that game, the players learned to split things up and not appear voting in a block. Eventually the bad guys would figure out how to use the voting to their advantage.
Look at Catharsis' NOTW XVI (well, maybe you can't, but I'll go on). Pinman and I used the voting patterns to not only prevent a connection to us being made but also to use our night kills to frame other innocents. I'd look at the patterns, decide who was frame worthy, kill someone that night then have Pinman during the day talk up a storm to get our lynch target killed. We did that for pretty much the entire game and we ended up winning without losing a single wolf. I'm fairly certain there wasn't any prophet in the game or we had axed him early on. In any event, the voting doomed the innocents.
As games got more complicated, voting patterns as concrete evidence went the way of the dodo. The advent of multiple bad guy sides really has screwed voting. Before, it was rare bad guys would accuse bad guys as (duh) they were on the same team. Not anymore though. In your game Renata, because the two War Party sides kept on accusing each other until they teamed up, I was unable to use the patterns to deduce who was bad and who wasn't. With bad guys accusing seemingly other bad guys from day one, the incorrect connection was made that they were all innocent. Not to mention the prophet self-destruction which doomed the innocents as well, but coupling the two together makes it seem pretty obvious how/why the bad guys won so decisively in that game.
The point I'm making is the games have evolved so much that voting isn't be the main evidence anymore simply because the games have gotten so complicated. If the games were simple, as in one bad guy side, one innocent side, and maybe a prophet or two, then yes, I can understand voting as prime evidence to use. But now with bad guys with conflicting vc's, it's damn near impossible to differentiate anything anymore.
I'm glad you mentioned how I got in trouble in ATPG's game. The problem there is choice was taken away from me. In a 30 something player game and my role as a lone wolf, I was put at a severe disadvantage when forced to vote. In this scenario, laying under the radar for as long as possible was really the best course of action, but because the ruleset demanded activity this choice was taken away from me. It's not that I had to vote that I have a problem with, it's the fact I could not choose how I played the game. You view the voting as evidence to use against me, I view it as being restricted in play style. Not voting maybe not fair to the innocents, but forced into playing like everyone else is hardly fun either. There's a fine line here.
Similar to what ATPG brought up, the problem with the inactives is how to enforce activity. It presents one major problem to the GM, and depending on circumstances, possibly an even greater second. Obviously the first major problem is the inactive himself. Obviously when roles were handed out the GM is working under the assumption everyone is going to be active. Now we have this inactive person who's now contributing nothing to the game, and the GM has to decide what to do with them. The second possible issue becomes what role is this character? If it's a random role with no real ability, then the GM would probably be alright in removing the character via the giant foot of god. However, if the player has a useful ability, specifically a prophet ability, does the GM still stomp on him, thus removing the ability from the game permanently? I know if it were up to me, I'd have a hard time doing so since the ability was likely put into the game to maintain a sense of what I call "balance on paper." If I kill off the player, the team who's side they were on is now down a strong role with no way to get it back. Sure, the player wasn't using it in the first place, but now there's no chance it'll ever get used, which brings me to my next point.
Unfortunately, a GM can't have individual "squashing" rules of each player in the event someone becomes inactive. A GM killing off one player then not another for the same reason is a pretty big hint the second player is someone important, so the ruling for the entire player cast would have to be uniform. So the GM has to either kill off everyone inactive or leave everyone inactive around. Both sides have serious drawbacks. Killing off players like I mentioned puts whatever side they are on at a severe disadvantage. If killed, any ability they have is permanently gone which can cause havoc with a game set up. If not killed, you're forcing (sort of) the mob to lynch them instead, which is a distraction to what the real goal of the day's lynch vote is. So what to do? Pizza's "present" idea seems to be the best option at least until some more ideas can be hashed around. It'll give the GM concrete knowledge on who is active and who isn't. But then as I've said then what? A player is found not contributing anything and now a decision has to be made about what to do with him? Obviously replacing the player with a reserve is the easiest and best way to go about doing it, but that's not always the case here. It's a slippery slope.
Early on (before my time) voting patterns were the main evidence for the innocents. Hell, I think I recall seeing somewhere that in one of the first games all of the wolves supported each other and when one got caught the rest had a date with the gallows soon afterward. After that game, the players learned to split things up and not appear voting in a block. Eventually the bad guys would figure out how to use the voting to their advantage.
Look at Catharsis' NOTW XVI (well, maybe you can't, but I'll go on). Pinman and I used the voting patterns to not only prevent a connection to us being made but also to use our night kills to frame other innocents. I'd look at the patterns, decide who was frame worthy, kill someone that night then have Pinman during the day talk up a storm to get our lynch target killed. We did that for pretty much the entire game and we ended up winning without losing a single wolf. I'm fairly certain there wasn't any prophet in the game or we had axed him early on. In any event, the voting doomed the innocents.
As games got more complicated, voting patterns as concrete evidence went the way of the dodo. The advent of multiple bad guy sides really has screwed voting. Before, it was rare bad guys would accuse bad guys as (duh) they were on the same team. Not anymore though. In your game Renata, because the two War Party sides kept on accusing each other until they teamed up, I was unable to use the patterns to deduce who was bad and who wasn't. With bad guys accusing seemingly other bad guys from day one, the incorrect connection was made that they were all innocent. Not to mention the prophet self-destruction which doomed the innocents as well, but coupling the two together makes it seem pretty obvious how/why the bad guys won so decisively in that game.
The point I'm making is the games have evolved so much that voting isn't be the main evidence anymore simply because the games have gotten so complicated. If the games were simple, as in one bad guy side, one innocent side, and maybe a prophet or two, then yes, I can understand voting as prime evidence to use. But now with bad guys with conflicting vc's, it's damn near impossible to differentiate anything anymore.
I'm glad you mentioned how I got in trouble in ATPG's game. The problem there is choice was taken away from me. In a 30 something player game and my role as a lone wolf, I was put at a severe disadvantage when forced to vote. In this scenario, laying under the radar for as long as possible was really the best course of action, but because the ruleset demanded activity this choice was taken away from me. It's not that I had to vote that I have a problem with, it's the fact I could not choose how I played the game. You view the voting as evidence to use against me, I view it as being restricted in play style. Not voting maybe not fair to the innocents, but forced into playing like everyone else is hardly fun either. There's a fine line here.
Similar to what ATPG brought up, the problem with the inactives is how to enforce activity. It presents one major problem to the GM, and depending on circumstances, possibly an even greater second. Obviously the first major problem is the inactive himself. Obviously when roles were handed out the GM is working under the assumption everyone is going to be active. Now we have this inactive person who's now contributing nothing to the game, and the GM has to decide what to do with them. The second possible issue becomes what role is this character? If it's a random role with no real ability, then the GM would probably be alright in removing the character via the giant foot of god. However, if the player has a useful ability, specifically a prophet ability, does the GM still stomp on him, thus removing the ability from the game permanently? I know if it were up to me, I'd have a hard time doing so since the ability was likely put into the game to maintain a sense of what I call "balance on paper." If I kill off the player, the team who's side they were on is now down a strong role with no way to get it back. Sure, the player wasn't using it in the first place, but now there's no chance it'll ever get used, which brings me to my next point.
Unfortunately, a GM can't have individual "squashing" rules of each player in the event someone becomes inactive. A GM killing off one player then not another for the same reason is a pretty big hint the second player is someone important, so the ruling for the entire player cast would have to be uniform. So the GM has to either kill off everyone inactive or leave everyone inactive around. Both sides have serious drawbacks. Killing off players like I mentioned puts whatever side they are on at a severe disadvantage. If killed, any ability they have is permanently gone which can cause havoc with a game set up. If not killed, you're forcing (sort of) the mob to lynch them instead, which is a distraction to what the real goal of the day's lynch vote is. So what to do? Pizza's "present" idea seems to be the best option at least until some more ideas can be hashed around. It'll give the GM concrete knowledge on who is active and who isn't. But then as I've said then what? A player is found not contributing anything and now a decision has to be made about what to do with him? Obviously replacing the player with a reserve is the easiest and best way to go about doing it, but that's not always the case here. It's a slippery slope.
cindle
Warlord
I'm IN
Askthepizzaguy
Know the Dark Side
I think if a replacement is available, the inactive should be replaced with such. If none is available, it is prudent and fair on all sides that the player, regardless of role, simply be tossed out. No favoritism on either side, mafia, town, or pro-town power role, should all be treated the same regardless.
In capo, a doctor, a detective, many many townies, and yes even a mafioso went inactive. All were mercilessly slain by the host. Fair is fair.
In capo, a doctor, a detective, many many townies, and yes even a mafioso went inactive. All were mercilessly slain by the host. Fair is fair.
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
I wish we had 75 players, but then that would last a couple of months
This wasn't entirely helpful to the innocents, as it also was responsible for the lynching of plarq, the freaking prophet, on Day One, on the original justification that he had the letter q in his name, which laid the foundation for the bad guys being ahead for most of the game.
Frozen In Ice
Emperor
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 1,536
Very good discussion going on here. I think I like ATPG's "Present" idea the best so far, but I'll try to give this some more thought when I can spare the time.
By the way, I'd like to be a reserve for right now.
By the way, I'd like to be a reserve for right now.
Love
Deity
I wish we had 75 players, but then that would last a couple of months
Well but it sucks to die first.
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