Cleaning up Circus: Forum intros and other junk

How would this interact with dead mafias and their innate ability to deadtalk with their team?
Why is it exactly that the mafia can deadtalk to their own teammates but villagers can't? I've never really understood why this has ever been allowed. Like I get why it might've been added as a rule (to nerf villages) but why is that as a late game villager who presumably hasn't been very involved all game that I have to figure stuff out on the fly in an abbreviated period while I'm playing against a UncleSam coached Flyhn and a DLE coached Gale? I can't talk to AG about why he sheeted LW and thus confirm my suspicions regarding him being a mole, but Gale/Flyhn are allowed to be coached what to do as the sole remaining mafia member? This isn't meant to demean anyone btw, I'm just using the ALLCAPS game as an example.

Considering the new rules we have regarding no c/ping role PMs that also nerfs the power of claiming, I don't think it makes sense any more to allow dead mafia players to talk to their teammates, but perhaps someone could explain if I've gone wrong somewhere in my reasoning.
 

Yeti

dark saturday
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
why is that as a late game villager who presumably hasn't been very involved all game that I have to figure stuff out on the fly in an abbreviated period while I'm playing against a UncleSam coached Flyhn and a DLE coached Gale? I can't talk to AG about why he sheeted LW and thus confirm my suspicions regarding him being a mole, but Gale/Flyhn are allowed to be coached what to do as the sole remaining mafia member?
I totally agree that this is a very valid point. That endgame was 100% Sam dictating Flyhn from the grave. Gale did put in a lot of work, more than Flyhn did/would've if he didn't have Sam/LightWolf both yelling at him in his team PM, but he also still did have DLE whispering in his ear with what to do. Gale didn't always listen to DLE but he still had that wizened presence to guide him. The ALLSTARS instantly lose if Sam/LW can't help Flyhn imo. I think Flyhn is trying to get better about this so props to him, but, if his team can't coach him he's dead in the water that game.

I don't really remember how deadtalking/stratalking after death has changed over time but it wouldn't surprise me if (mafia) deadtalking to team was loosened up to allow for all the tryhard!mafians who die but still feel indebted to helping their team. And to counter the rise of namekilling so-called Goods early in the game to try and cripple their team's intelligence. This obviously would rat out a mole into the village way too easily if the namekilled good village players could freely stratalk and kept questioning why the mole didn't act quite in the best interests of the village. Hence why the rule is that you can only stratalk with people confirmedly on your team. Which isn't a big deal at all in multifaction because every team can do it equally. However in village vs mafia when the mafia can still stratalk and the village leader(s) go down and the few villagers who had never been able to be inspected/proven all game get the sheet and suddenly the last mafia player(s) have their Expert scripting their moves it's like

Part of the problem is that while the dead!mafian can't gain new info to talk about, or relay information they didn't share before dying, they can still strategize about new information their living teammate gets so again, the remaining villagers are disadvantaged by not knowing The Plan whereas the dead!mafians can continue to guide their team.
 
How I would make the role is, the village Medium can only talk to dead villagers. So in this instance I wouldn't be in support of no flip on death or unreliable flip.

I think this is the counterpart to dead mafians being allowed to stratalk with their team. While they can't share new info, so if the mafia leader/experienced player goes down they can't outright negotiate, they can help their team decide ideal targets, etc.

The problem with being town and [dying/having a shady or low-prio role] is you usually aren't allowed to stratalk after dying, or get info. If you have a village Medium whose channel/convo only gets dead town added, then the dead town can still participate and offer their opinions to the Medium who relays them to the living town council on the sheet.

So if mafia can talk with their team by default, and this role allows villagers to do that (up until its death), it might be interesting? At least people wouldn't get quite so frustrated dying N1 and never getting info unless the host likes/trusts them enough to sheet.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNAL Village Leaders incoming
 
Yeah I feel like minimizing times when one or two people are calling all the shots and everyone else is just kind of there should be what we are aiming for

e: This applies to non-village factions too
 

Yeti

dark saturday
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNAL Village Leaders incoming
Yeah I feel like minimizing times when one or two people are calling all the shots and everyone else is just kind of there should be what we are aiming for

e: This applies to non-village factions too
Valid on both points. I'm not sure what the middle ground would be here and I think it needs more discussion.

The problem with no stratalk [as mafia]:
Namekilling becomes an EXTREMELY valid strategy. The sooner you kill off the experienced players who know what they are doing, the better. Think this is why stratalk became a thing because namekilling got to be so stupid. And there are still people who would be namekilled to this day... heck Sam will make N0 judgments just based on "is this other 6+ year player in the game y/n then they must be mafia leading a team if i am village" so when your mods are fully in favor of targeting experienced players [for being mafia] you need some sort of solution. It is kind of sucky to have to pick between BGing the brains of your team because the rest of the players are put on the team for being new/idle and BGing your actual best role. See: why Walrein always puts Flyhn on a faction with LightWolf/I. Again not to knock Flyhn because he is trying hard now to get more active BUT when playerlists aren't RNGed but assigned roles based on "I have this namekill target to balance out this newbie" it is sort of stupid to allow teams to be left dead in the water by killing their 'leader.' Pretty sure LightWolf hasn't lived beyond night 2 in any game but ALLCAPS for like 2 years.
Aliases are the only way to prevent this. However aliases really hinder people being willing to vote especially in multifaction. But in big games of village vs mafia they are necessary to allow otherwise-namekill targets to hide for a lot longer.
Mafians often feel more invested in their win due to being a. informed b. on a smaller team so they want to keep being involved in helping their team and guiding the remaining players even after they die. Not always, but many will not want to see their team fall into disrepair if they can talk strategy and stop it. Such as if someone who doesn't know better is like, I want to hook this guy we know has been SGed! You might kill that player instead and hook someone else under the assumption they will be SGed but not BGed again. Is it fair to the other players on a mafia team to say "you will lose while a newer player fumbles and learns the game?" or is it fair to say "you can point a newer player in the right direction so they learn the game without jeopardizing their team's chances?" Both result in the new player learning what to do and how to play well as long as whoever does know, explains to them why one target is bad and the other good.

The problem with stratalk [on mafia only]:
You get people who know tf what they're doing like Sam and DLE bossing around the last player on their team in endgame when the remaining few villagers have no such advantage and are scrambling to understand what came before them, why, and what is actually true about their own team/the mafias.
Once a villager dies, that is it. The end. They can no longer have any bearing on the game and thus if they die early the game becomes extremely boring while they wait for it to end so another can be started (especially with the current Circus activity level, if Walrein or I don't have a game ready to go and feel like hosting there quite possibly could not be a game for a while. hopefully we have some interested hosts in filling those gaps coming up) and they can participate again.

The foreseeable problem with stratalk [on village]:
The village leader can never be silenced and thus nazi mods the game like a tyrant. See: any time UncleSam has led a village even if he wasn't village-aligned. Nobody has fun. Other people's opinions are irrelevant because why listen to anyone but the storied village leader?!
Possible solution:
Dictate that the Medium cannot communicate more than X% of information, sourced from only one player. This would be extremely difficult to manage since the leader could strongly hint to get other people to say what they want said. But it would mean everything the Medium is saying, cannot just be village leader quotes.

The foreseeable benefit of stratalk [on village]:
As long as the Medium is alive, remaining town members will not be thrust into the dark when the game dwindles down and people who weren't trusted before now have to be due to shady roles or something low priority to confirm is town (IE rogue or announcer).
As long as the Medium is alive, people who died early will still be able to get onto the sheet and have a voice.
Mafia benefit: if the village leader can continue speaking after death, they can ignore that player and kill actual power roles. Before you had to choose do you silence the intellect or do you eliminate good roles like inspector/hooker? The leader usually has some junk role and isn't one of the S Tier power roles so it wasn't role-wise advantageous to kill them, only strategically. Now you can just ignore them and find better roles without needing to make that choice.

I mean let's be real, strategic kills to silence skilled players has always been a valid and good strategy but is it really beneficial to have it be a good strategy? Is dropping all teams into chaos going to make Smogon mafia a better game? Or would it improve if untrusted villagers could continue having a voice and getting leadership so they know what to do? Maybe people will disagree with me and come out in strong support of namekilling/stratkills over rolekills. Please discuss if so. Dunno if there's a right/wrong answer.
 
Name targetting is already a good strategy and part of the reason why it happens so much is because a lot of the time roles aren't randomized. If hosts want to make ipl mafia/wolf in every game he ever joins, of course I'm going to want to inspect him if I'm in a game with him. The same applies for any "big name player." And in situations such as early in games where the best strategy is to randomize your action, people will most usually always have a preference of checking the "better" players over picking a random name from the playerlist.

My opinion of the matter is that yea, name-killing sucks, but people are going to have to suck it up unfortunately for games without aliases. In an ideal world, letting new players think for themselves far into the game without outside help will eventually improve those players to the point where maybe we can have "expert" games again where the skill level is about equal enough that people being more indifferent towards targetting the "big names." Is that realistically going to happen? Probably not, as I think certain players have ingrained reputations that are difficult to change. But I do think that no dead talking for anybody period is best for the game in terms of giving players the room to make mistakes and allowing them to grow + learn as a result.

Killing the village leader/"good" players (and alternatively protecting the good players) is a valid strategy because of how many roles there are in any given smogon mafia game. When everyone has a role (and you can scumhunt through deciphering results), it's a lot more acceptable to protect the person who is interpreting those results since that's where your chances of winning are, not necessarily in the inspector who is realistically only checking 1/4 of the playerlist, if that.

On another note, I think having more games with aliases would be a good thing. I'm not even talking about games held on another forum, but just given the entire playerlist aliases. The reason why people don't like voting when aliases are involved is only because your alias is revealed when you vote (and this is done I believe because of NPCs? although feel free someone to correct me if I'm wrong). I think just having games with x players and x aliases would go a long way to at least partially stop the issue of name-targetting, at least in the beginning stages of the game where imo it's mainly a problem.

So in sum I guess:
People can't learn to play/think for themselves if mafia teammates are playing through him --> Disallow all dead-talk, mafia included
Name-killing becomes more prominent as a result; the solution is to implement a 1:1 ratio of aliases to players, which ensures that people cannot rand-target "big names" in the early game. While mid/late game when aliases become known killing off good players is still a valid strategy, it's not as big of a problem, since at the very least these players were insta-killed at the start for just existing (and now that early game kill which would normally hit LW is hitting a random member of the playerlist).

just my 2c
 

Ampharos

tag walls, punch fascists
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
Jalmont the reason I reveal aliases upon voting is to emulate anon forums, where you vote through aliases anyways. That's the main flaw of running alias games on Smogon vs. offsite - since Smogon accounts have to cast the votes, you can't really have a "true" alias game.

The only real workaround to this would be to have people PM their votes to the host, who would then announce that X alias has voted for Y. The problem with THAT is that unless you have a host online 24/7, people aren't going to know who's been voting for what. It's sort of a lose-lose. Honestly I think alias games should be offsite whenever possible, just because it's more true to the alias format and also way cooler.
 

Yeti

dark saturday
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
(2:32:12 pm) <shade> yo jalmont
(2:32:17 pm) <shade> 'name targeting sucks, suck it up'
(2:32:26 pm) <shade> just gonna drive away Old Players
(2:32:34 pm) <shade> o hes quit
(2:32:39 pm) <%Twin> he is on ps
(2:32:54 pm) <%Yeti> yea i agree shade
(2:33:02 pm) <%Yeti> im not sure its the best thing to allow/support
(2:33:10 pm) <%Yeti> but im also not sure if alternatives are better
(2:34:39 pm) <shade> mafia dting works
(2:34:49 pm) <shade> i should mafia dt more in this bg game
(2:34:49 pm) <shade> tbh

posting this 4 shade so he can get his opinion out ayy.

also something to consider is do you want to alienate old players who know they will be namekilled and then rendered useless every game? or do you rng assign everyone to teams like I did in ALLCAPS so you can't say what the distributions are? funnily enough the RNG put 5/6 mods on mafia (Sam/LW and billy/DLE/shade, only zorbees was town).
 

zorbees

Chwa for no reason!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Jalmont I don't think its just NPCs (although they are a big part of it), but connecting your username to an alias or a group of aliases is not usually a good idea as it gives the other teams info.

Walrein I'm highly considering a private lynch for my upcoming multifaction game. The main problems I have with the current "Smogon+Alias" system are that the lynches aren't fought hard over, and subsequently stealth lynches are common. I think that also happened in RWBY because nobody had any hard allies who they could win with, so the lynch early on was "as long as its not my team". Private lynch in my opinion encourages teams to go hard for the lynch, because the only way to know that the lynch isn't coming your way is to outvote the other side. Additionally, I think it will reward skilled play for a variety of reasons.

EDIT: I think the other alternative is, just don't reveal aliases of the voters.
 
Jalmont the reason I reveal aliases upon voting is to emulate anon forums, where you vote through aliases anyways. That's the main flaw of running alias games on Smogon vs. offsite - since Smogon accounts have to cast the votes, you can't really have a "true" alias game.

The only real workaround to this would be to have people PM their votes to the host, who would then announce that X alias has voted for Y. The problem with THAT is that unless you have a host online 24/7, people aren't going to know who's been voting for what. It's sort of a lose-lose. Honestly I think alias games should be offsite whenever possible, just because it's more true to the alias format and also way cooler.
I thought about this, and kinda building off zorbees's point, the reason why revealing aliases doesn't work on smogon is because it allows people to connect alias --> smogon user name. In offsite games, there's no way to tell which smogon user is which alias without revealing your alias, whereas smogon aliases you can basically connect the dots to work out aliases. If we just had aliases, no NPCs, and they weren't revealed upon vote then I think that we would have a fair solution - no deadtalking mafia included, but aliases would be added to prevent name-killing.

Honestly, saying "ppl who get name-killed should suck it up" was a misleading way to get my point across and obviously since mafia is meant to be fun, it should be fun for everyone including the older users. That's why I think my suggestion of not revealing smogon usernames finds a good balance in terms of stopping people from name-targetting while still keeping games relatively simply. zorbees's idea of a private lynch I think would also be a cool/interesting gimmick that I'd like to see pan out, especially for multifaction games (which is a whole another story I want to complain about lol).

At the end of the day though, I just want to play mafia, and you need people to play mafia. The rules should never be so strict that they favor having the "ideal" game, whatever that may be, such that people lose interest/don't want to play any longer. Does that mean we should never change the rules because of tradition/appease older players? I would say no, and I really feel as if the no c/p rule has been a positive change (maybe in the future we can do games with c/p). But at the same time, I think it's also important that games maximize the fun of all individuals as much as possible, and tbh the issue isn't really important enough to make a definitive ruling either way. At the very least I think it's good having the suggestion out there so that future hosts can consider tweaking the rules a bit and see how things change and what not.
 
I mean eventually people will play enough games that people can stop circlejerking around the REAL oldfags and namekilling them lol. Idk I read a lot of tldrs and saw a lot of big plays from players who earned their rep but I had a very fun time playing and talking with Gale in ALLCAPS and Slim Guldo in RWBY, for instance, who I previously didn't know too much about. Not exactly newbies, but what I've seen most of the people that don't get nametargeted still have great heads on their soldiers.

It's just part of any community but that's just going to change with culture, the more open and welcoming we are in involving new players the more active better players are going to crop up out of that pool in the future.
 

askaninjask

[FLAIL ARMS]
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
not enough villagers being filled in enough to finish the game is NOT something that the designer of the game has to worry about

it provides an interesting dynamic among the village: the fewer people have the sheet, the more secure, but if all villagers with access to it die, all of the information is lost, so the village MUST trust a larger number of villagers than they would otherwise want to

it provides a nice dynamic.
 

askaninjask

[FLAIL ARMS]
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
and not that my opinion is necessarily still relevant, but I am obv all in favor of changing the existing guide - it was never great to begin with and is now definitely outdated as we continue to figure out exactly what we want this forum to be.
 

Gmax

kuahahahaha
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I'm not really understanding the concerns about aliases. Aliases open the game up. A lot. People might be hesitant to vote, but when it's necessary, the votes pour out. The situation to do that just needs to be created. OC is an integral part of the games that we play, and the use of aliases makes it a lot more free-flowing. It also deals with village leader strong-arming to some extent. Can't strong-arm without targets at your disposal. It also helps villages get things running quicker, because people, knowing that they're protected by their alias, will contact a village leader candidate early in the game with their results without fear of dying for it.

The game becomes one of out-strategising the other teams, in which case inter-team communication also becomes more important. Even if a player leading a mafia can strat-deadtalk, s/he can't exactly talk through someone. Handling inter-team communication is a large part of what players need to learn. You cannot enter into a negotiation with the representative of another mafia without having already thought out what your actions are going to be over the next few nights. The other party will almost ALWAYS present some option that you haven't already thought of. At that point, all your strat-talked, pre-prepared plans go to hell. You need to be able to come up with stuff on the spot, or at least to think quickly, otherwise, there are always other teams to negotiate with. That can't happen if you've just been relegated to following instructions all game. Also, if people are talking through others, then that needs to be discouraged in the same way we discourage pre-game collab. It's not really a rule, but it's just something that isn't done, and is called out when it's perpetrated. If someone is dead, they shouldn't be intervening in conversations.

More than creating ways to stop people dominating games, we need to stop encouraging an attitude where people dominate. It's not healthy for the community. It doesn't encourage people to come back and play games again. It's not really something that you can enforce, but it's something the community needs to embrace. Barking out orders is not the way to run a mafia team. People in the team need to be trusted with information. They need to be trusted with being part of the decision-making process. They must be encouraged and invited to participate in the first few nights, and they'll do it automatically as the game goes along. If you're still interested in playing mafia with good players 10 games from now, you need some of those new players to be coming back and playing too. Some people will say that nothing will ever get done that way. That's not true. You can have an open discussion with everyone, and ask people for their feedback. Make a decision, explain why you're making it, and then ask people if they get the reasoning or have any alternate suggestions. It forces them to think, or at least exposes them to the thought process. Try to have the whole decision-making process while most people are around. INVOLVE new players. Seriously, mafia teams don't need village leader-type subfactions.

Enforcer types are gonna enforce no matter what type of ruleset you give them. Lol even if you set up FFAs, there will be some people deciding what others do. Abandoning a bunch of newer players without the benefit of strat-talk in a mafia team that already has lower resources than the village isn't going to help that. They need to be encouraged to take a more active part in the game by the people playing on their teams. Aliases are also a boon to them, and lets them play more casually. They don't need to have a claim ready immediately with the fear of being wrecked by active village leaders. And oh god, using aliases kills name-targeting like nothing else. Name-targeting is vile and fun-killing, but also, unfortunately, a valid strategy. We can make it less so.

SOURCE: IM THE BEST AT MAFIA EVER

~Gmax/Ankit~
 
it's 3AM so this post is probably a mess

The issue is that enforcer-type personalities need to want to change their attitude themselves. And, since people that fall under that umbrella feel a need to always be right and rarely actually listen to what other people have to say when it disagrees with them, it's rare that they actually want to or are even capable of admitting that they are this way.

Furthermore, while having high quality games is fun, for a lot of people it is not what draws them in in the first place. A sense of community and the ever nebulous fun are important. And I think that's a big part of what this discussion is about. The current state of things are heavily catered to making games "good." You handpick teams so that the player skill is well balanced so that the game is close, you enable strat talk so that namekilling isn't as strong . But if people aren't into the game in the first place, what's the point? High quality games are a byproduct of people are involved and motivated to play, and with how unique smogon mafia is that is something you need to build over time. You can't just throw newbies in and have some vet unload his 10 years of experience on them while they just sit there dazed. They're not going to absorb any of it. Strat deadtalk is only useful when people involved are invested enough that it's a useful learning experience.

Also, people gotta cut down on the seriousness. People rage at the host when their team loses because this role was broken or my faction was underpowered and they start doing it before the game is even over and they've only seen half the roles. And that kills interest, because who wants to run a game for someone like that? It's all so fucking serious. It's even in the forum name: we're not just any old mafia hub, we're the Competitive Mafia Hub. Don't bother showing up if you're a scrub. Also we don't play the same mafia game that every other website on the internet plays, in case you didn't know, we play mafia's cousin who grew up on nothing but watching political debates and Diplomacy, so even if you've plenty of experiences with mafia you're still gonna be a total newbie here. Not intimidating at all. This is all great if you want to feel elite, but if you actually wanna play games you gotta make a change.

Also every game should have aliases. And no smogon username checkers on teams with instakills thanks
 
I agree with a lot of what Yeti says but I don't think it's just a mod thing but a userbase thing as well. It's not just the mods who shouldn't be dicks, we all shouldn't be assholes to each other and/or be overly negative about what we perceive to be bad play/hosting errors. And I'm definitely to blame for this as well. I think it's almost a smogon mafia culture thing where if you don't end up winning, you find something to whine about, or someone to bitch about, and while that can be fun, it can also be hugely upsetting/annoying/hurtful to the people you are roasting (when it's not in good nature). I genuinely think that we have the best group of mods maybe in circus right now (at least post 2011) and that all in all, they've all done a really good job at being active in the subforum and helping to revive mafia. But at the same thing, I also think it's important that we recognize the fact that sometimes we can take it too far.

As a personal anecdote, while I'm not necessarily the most "known" player or anything, I've played here for about 4 years, but I legitimately almost permanently quit this site (and probably would have if I cared about school a little more) around last year during sunny's flavorless mafia game because of the crap that a certain user gave me over what he perceived to be a "bad play." And yeah, he was right, I even personally admitted that I made a mistake that was detrimental to my team winning. That's fine, I can handle criticism. But then to go from shitting on a person to preventing them from playing your game and advocating them to be put on the blacklist (when players have made far worse mistakes)? And then to go into a different game and turn the game into shitting on me as a person due to fucking up in one mafia? It fucking sucks. I wasn't having any fun. It didn't make me feel like I was a part of the community after playing for 3 years. And while I don't expect to be friends with everyone/have everyone know me, it was very disheartening that I was being excluded from games for making a minor mistake that really didn't matter in the long run.

Maybe people will disagree that what I say means anything, but all in know is that in my experience, being overly critical/negative is a huge turn off from wanting to play games on this site. I've played mafia on a bunch of different sites and also modded a forum games forum elsewhere, but the reason why I'm here right now is because I think Smogon has a really unique and fun way of playing mafia and I also genuinely enjoy playing with all of you guys. And while i don't want to take away our culture of bad-mouthing each other, I do feel as if we need to realize there's a point at which we can go too far in doing so.
 

Ampharos

tag walls, punch fascists
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
this is gonna be a long post so buckle in folks

So the major debate about village leaders seems to be a point about macro strategy vs. individual player engagement, and I think our response to this strategy ultimately comes down to which we value more.

On the one hand, from a purely strategic standpoint, it's a good system. It adds an interesting dynamic to villages that allows them to actually compete with mafia teams during the night phase, which opens up a lot more design options for prospective hosts. We can create roles that are almost entirely useless outside of being village leaders, and it's just fine. We can introduce roles designed entirely to circumvent the system, and that's great too.

On the other hand, I do think we have to care about individual players, especially since lately there's been such a focus on growing the community (and I think Metagame Mafia has been a great first step, but we need to keep the momentum going or we're going to fall back into the same rut). If a player feels like they have no agency, they're going to have less fun, and are going to be less likely to play in future games. Obviously, that's no good.

To be honest, I don't think we should be trying to eliminate village leaders - mostly because I don't think we can without abolishing OC entirely. As long as outside contact is enabled, people are going to try to step up and collect claims, regardless of how unfavorable it is for them to do so; honestly, I think village leaders in unfavorable conditions are even worse than usual, because then even the ones who are supposed to be participating aren't really having any fun. We play games here, guys. Fun is the goal.

I think the best way to progress is to try to give villagers more agency. The more interesting we can make their roles, the more they're going to be involved. Can we completely abolish boring roles? No, because then villages would probably be too strong and games would become imbalanced. And of course some people are going to idle no matter how Unique and Fun their role is. However, if we take steps to make villagers more active and engaged, we won't have to try to completely eliminate any single style of play, because the game will diversify on its own.

Anyways, enough about game design. Let's talk about the forum itself. This is already pretty similar to the original intent of this thread so I didn't really feel like making a new one for this.

Basically, it's not just the newbie guide - pretty much all of our forum intro stuff is outdated, and there's a LOT of stuff we could stand to improve. Here's some things I think we need to do:

Make aska's thread more of a "how to mafia" thing, and create a proper intro thread
I realize that mafia is our main area of expertise, but aska's thread literally ONLY covers mafia. If we turn his thread into a mafia-specific guide and create a more basic catch-all intro thread, we can serve a dual purpose: aska's guide will be able to go more in-depth and better inform newbies on the intracacies of Smogon mafia, while the more generic intro will serve as a good hub for info on all things Circus-related as well as boost visibility for our non-mafia communities. Which brings me to...

Increased visibility for non-mafia communities
Roleplaying is still huge and the #flamel community deserves to be mentioned in whatever intro we come up with. I also still have #thegame regged and would be absolutely down to revive the Diplomacy community if there's enough interest - in fact, I'm planning on getting a game going later this summer. The point is, mafia isn't the only thing we have here and we shouldn't give that impression.

Increased visibility for IRC and PS
#circus is mentioned once briefly in aska's thread and nowhere in Mekkah's. PS and #flamel aren't mentioned at all. Whatever hub we go with needs to have all of these in one easy-to-find location so that newbies can actually figure out where the hell we do most of our game-playing.

General updates to the Circus Rules thread
-remove the "which grew too big and too serious for Firebot" thing, most users nowadays (myself included) weren't around for the mafia-on-Firebot days
-in rule 5 under "pregame", the phrase "if applicable to your game level" hasn't made sense since we abolished beginner/standard/expert and should be deleted
-maybe readd billy/shade as listed mods since billy's been modding again as of late and shade's expressed interest in becoming more active. Up to them though.
-Calling the blacklist a list of people who are "really bad at mafia" is super insular and could be offputting to some hapless newbie who reads it and becomes terrified of screwing up and getting blacklisted. We should probably just say something along the lines of "The blacklist is a list of malicious rulebreakers and/or repeated idlers" or something along those lines. Could we still blacklist someone for being procks-level bad? Maybe. But I don't think we should advertise it as such.

Update the description of OSI
Nothing major, but Mekkah's guidelines post should probably mention that this is also where we do most meta-discussion about the forum, since that's largely what it's become as of late.

Mention ASB somewhere maybe?
Are they blanketed under us? I don't even know, it shows up like that on the forum listing. At the very least some clarification on that situation would be nice.

Guide on how to host a game
The one in the rules ends with "begin hosting your game". But how does one go about hosting a circus game? I know Mekkah(?) wrote a Smog article on that ages ago so at the bare minimum we could link that somewhere, but a more mordernized guide might be in order (and as one of the more prolific hosts I'd be more than willing to write it)

On postgames
That's still a forum tag, right? We should probably explain what the hell that is somewhere. The fact that me/Sam are doing one for Metagame will probably help.

OPTIONAL AND WE SHOULD PROBABLY DISCUSS THIS IN DEPTH: Revert back to just being Circus Maximus
I realize I was 100% on board with the name change whenever we did that whole business, but the non-circus users I've spoken to have reacted pretty negatively to it, and I can see why. Basically their arguments were that it makes us seem sort of pretentious and overly-tryhardy (which we kinda are but we don't need newcomers to know that lol) and that if we want to elaborate on the specifics of the forum we should just use the subtitle rather than including the subtitle in the actual forum title.

So yeah. Doing some of the above, I think, would go a long way in helping people not be confused by this forum.

The intro/hub that I mentioned could swipe something similar to the intro sentence in the current Rules thread and then just go on to explain what all we do here. The following is one I came up with real quick, and could probably use some editing, but I think something similar to it would be good.

----------------------------------------------------------------

<fancy header maybe? if we make a cool one for the PS room we could swipe that>

Hello, Smogon! Welcome to Circus Maximus! Now, you may be wondering: "what the hell is a Circus Maximus?" Well, my hypothetical friend, that's an excellent question! Here you'll find:

-Mafia (the party game) - but not like you're used to! Check out this thread [link to aska's thread] for more info.
-Tabletop RPGs - mostly Pathfinder, but other systems certainly aren't out of the question. For more info, look here [link to PFS thread maybe? or make a thread about circus tabletop?]
-Diplomacy - everyone's favorite board game about backstabbing your friends!
-Tournaments (not for Pokemon, obviously) - for video games such as League of Legends or Mario Kart, or for classic games such as Chess, or for card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh!
-and much much more!

To overgeneralize things, we specialize in forum games. Not stuff like "do x to the poster above/below you" - stuff like that goes in Firebot. This is more a place for strategy games. Most of our "unique" games are spinoffs of our mafia variant and use similar mechanics, but anything with strategy to it is fair game.

So how does one get involved? It's easy! Any thread that contains "signups" in the title is a game that's currently accepting player signups. Just post "in" in that thread, and you've signed up! Once signups close, the thread for the game itself will be posted. You'll usually receive a PM if you got in, but even if you didn't, check the thread, because the playerlist will always be in the OP. After that, play the game and have fun!

Looking to chat with the community? We've got a couple of hangouts:
-The unlisted room "Circus Maximus" on Pokemon Showdown and the channel #circus on the synIRC network are general hubs for the forum as a whole.
-#flamel on synIRC is Circus's tabletop headquarters
-#thegame on synIRC is the go-to channel for all things diplomacy
-many games make their own IRC channels as well, usually listed in the OP of both the signup thread and the actual game thread.

So where does one go from here? The next best thread to read is probably the Rules [link Mekkah's thread] - it's a bit dry, but it's necessary, and highly informative as well! If you're looking to play mafia, this thread [link aska's thread again] is incredibly useful. And if you'd like to start running games yourself, check out this [link to host guide if we do one] handy guide.

Have fun, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

---------------------------------------------------------------

That's not a perfect intro by any means, but it's a good jumping-off point. If we decide to repurpose aska's thread it'll probably need rewrites beyond what I proposed in this thread's OP, and I'd be willing to write/cowrite a hosting guide as well, but I'll save that for another night.

gonna tag billymills shade UncleSam zorbees LightWolf Da Letter El Yeti vonFiedler as circus badgeholders as well as Agape since from what I can tell he basically runs the tabletop community these days. I figure it's MOST important that you guys see this since it involves thread stickying and other mod-type stuff, and I need Agape/von's input on tabletop stuff since I'm barely involved with it, but if you're not one of these people that doesn't mean I don't want your input - in fact, far from it. Everyone with a vested interest in circus who has an opinion on what I've posted should give their feedback because leaving the future of an entire community in my hands is probably a bad idea LOL
 

LightWolf

lightwoof
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
May as well take this to weigh in on everything.

Village leaders: in ye olde times village leadership while more exclusive was still larger than most pre metagame games. To me this has to do with being more of a social club rather than bunch of people wanting to play mafia with whoever. And one would even go to extreme lengths like posting pictures of their washed hair and shoes to get in on the village action. On the other hand some people only cared about others they judged good and ignored all others, leading to bizarre team within teams that made all the decisions, essentially village leadership in mafia teams.

Now after the history lesson let me show you where I was going. It is natural and always has been to distrust those who you don't know or even if they look clever if their understanding of the game is good enough to put it to use. Ultrapushy people trust no one but themselves which is not necessarily bad, as it is the same reasoning that spawns proactive players who do not just sheep but want to involve themselves. This however slowly turns into the wish to make very decision you can, to decide who you have to trust, etcetera. The Village leader system is in no way responsible for selfish people or uncle I lead Sam, whatever system we used, those people would still try to be at the centre of it, which still isn't bad.

If a host is looking to make the number involved in the leadership higher make villagers die like flies. It seems to have worked in metagame fairly well. Another easy way is to not give the usual suspects the roles that encourage leading, yeti twin? What were you guys smoking! As jalmont put it people like him are perfect for those, and gives them a well deserved chAnce in the spot light.

All in all there is no actual alternative to village leaders so stop trying to kill it instead pray on its weaknesses in a way that encourages its negatives being fixed(kills yes, recruited to mafia or artificial lose conditions please no, Both tell me to tell the least people anything)

Point two deadtalking:
Name killing is not really the reason it exists as it was relevant in a namekilling preventing anon era. It is more of a chance to stay relevant in the game if you wish to be. While slightly unfair to the village, it's not really applicable there outside of big mason groups, even a dead twin talking to another is mostly useful to tell them what to do rathr than brainstorming. Also I'm against anything that undermines the killing of village leaders. Messing with it in a fun experimental game sure, but in general it's fine as is in basic setups.

As for the naming. My personal gripe was that circus maximus was a name that didn't make it obvious what our forum was about. Personally I was more in favour of ditching the name circus maximus, but the long name won out in the end. I'd much prefer something like Mafia Hideout(Hydeout. because puns) is my clear preference. The write up is good but it goes way too much like we are explaining it to children, but the tone can easily be changed and the contents look good. What the problem with our image is, that we are like league players, we shot in people who just play for fun and tend to go into a frenzy if someone uses the excuse that it's just a game. Winning has become more important than overall enjoyment which is why postgames turned from congratulating the winners and lamenting the plays that they could have made, into complaining about who ducked up and what the host has done wrong(can't wait for metagame postgame to do just that).

Bottom line is: we need to have more fun, best mafia moments are when plans your team worked hard on come to fruition, as you giggle like school girls when the village fails thanks to something we did.

Final point: everyone see that anti gmax sticky, can we have one for creating anon forums on specific site so we can stop having excuses. All that needs to be done is that the nameless forum is checked by a mod before the subforums are named and posts are added.
 
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I like the Circus Maximus name. I think it's a cool very smogon-esque name that fits in with the rest of the site (or at least did until everything was given generic names). I do agree the current name is sort of pretentious, but mainly that it doesn't really add anything (especially if you don't know what mafia is already). I would prefer reverting the name just back to Circus Maximus, and then below it put a blurb that says "Play Forum Games like mafia and diplomacy here" or something.

If we were to make a name change, it should just be something simple like "Forum Games" or something like that but that's not as cool as being "Circus Maximus" I feel.
 
Circus Maximus: The Competitive Mafia Hub is a pretentious name that fits perfectly with the rest of the site's nomenclature and gives people a better idea of what they're getting into.

I just want to see in addition to an intro section, a common strategies section where something like village leader is explained. This wouldn't be meant to tell people how to play, but prepare them for common practices around here in an unbiased way as opposed to hearing an explanation ingame from someone who could be mafia. I also like preventing newb town mislynches because they react incorrectly to a strategy they've never seen before

I'd be willing to write this if it's something people want
 

UncleSam

Leading this village
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
The entire point of changing the name was to have the forum show up on a google search for 'online mafia'.

I'm ok with the intro thread as-is content wise, though it could certainly stand a significant update/rewrite. I'm pretty sure I sent around an alternative intro thread to badge-holders in Circus which I never got around to finalizing and posting, I might have time to dig that up later today.

I'd prefer just changing the title to:
Circus Maximus: Online Mafia and other Forum Games

Something that shows up on a Google search and is no longer pretentious.

I'll look into editing the rules thread later today as well. Definitely some minor edits I've been meaning to make since the re-vamp I did last month.

I think maybe adding in Walrein's header to the existing introduction thread + re-vamping it is the way to go with this; I'd rather not make another sticky for this and I do think that aska's intro is still quite valuable, even if a bit outdated.

Thoughts?

Walrein I made a post in the Intro thread (directly below it) titled 'communication in mafia games' which addresses most of your concerns with visibility for Showdown/#circus.

OSI could definitely use an updated description, I'll talk to tennisace about it once we come up with one.

Suggestion: Subforum Policy Discussion
 

Ampharos

tag walls, punch fascists
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
we don't even show up if you search "smogon mafia" it just links to all the Smog articles lol
 
The tabletop community is 100% IRC, barring the occasional PSW. This should be emphasised in the guide.

There ought to be example games of every genre linked in the guide.
 

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