Sweet. Lots of responses.
mith wrote:Newbie Games are off-limits for anything but Mafia flavor.
Agreed 100%.
mith wrote:There have to be boundaries, and they need to be reasonably well defined - original material based in a common and well-known genre might be ok; Fuwochichi vs. the Sandwich Army, not so much.
Disagree. I think that if the basic idea is that players should be able to skip the flavor entirely and still play the game, then it doesn't really matter what's written there. I do think that specific themes (non-original material, where knowledge of the theme could be a factor) should stay in the theme queues. If you want to impose a limit on subject matter, the best way to do it IMO is to have each mod submit a brief statement about the flavor (example: Gypsies have infiltrated a carnival.) with his/her setup.
Mith wrote:All flavor should be public (no role PM flavor that could be claimed, for example). That would have to include role names, and I'm not sure whether it would make more sense to say "no flavor in roles, period" or have the option of role name flavor if it's open (i.e. the OP/rules post lists "Alien = Mafia, Space Explorer = Townie, etc." for all possible roles).
Mostly agreed. The only problem is that if a mod wants to use a unique role of his own creation (within current guidelines) it would be pretty obvious on a list of all possible roles and players would not be able to try fake-claiming a unique or rare role that wasn't on the list. It might be better to have the information publically
available
but not posted, meaning that any player can ask for a doc rolename from the mod or whatever at any time. In a recent normal I ran with lightly (mafia) flavored role PMs, I used this solution and it worked. If we did institute a "no PM flavor" or "public PM flavor only" rule for this, I'd rather if it was conditional on using non-mafia/werewolf flavor so that mods could choose to follow one set of guidelines or the other. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't want to expand our options at the cost of limiting them in another area.
mith wrote:At the least, open role PMs should be "translated" into normal flavor - players shouldn't need to parse your treasure hunt flavor to figure out what their role actually does.
Agreed 100%. I'm not interested in expanding the amount of flavor that we alreday allow, or in creating niche role PMs or whatever. I really do think that should stay in the theme games. Mainly, I'm suggesting that the subject matter of public flavor (i.e. death scenes) be less limited. I discussed role names and PM flavor simply because one leads to the other, and if we do this, we're going to have people (including me) wanting to refer to the cop in a witchhunt game as an inquisitor. However, I woudn't want to take it further than that, and I'd be fine not taking it that far, or taking measures to ensure that such things do not effect gameplay at all.
Here's my own stab at guidelines for expanded normal flavor:
- Normal games must be flavorless, contain only flavor based on mafia or werewolf, or adhere to the following guidelines.
- The mod should post a notice in the queue and in his ruleset, informing players that they are signing up for and/or playing a flavored normal game.
- Flavor should be
entirely
original. Games based on books, movies, videogames, sports, real people, or any other topic which would allow a player's knowledge of the source to give him an advantage should be run as theme games. Please provide a brief summary of your flavor when you submit your setup for review. (example: The town are lumberjacks and the mafia are environmentalists.)
- Flavor posted in the thread should have absolutely no bearing on the game. It should be possible for a player to read only the role reveals posted at the bottom or top of any death scene and gain all information needed to play. This relevant information should be formatted to stand out from the rest of the post and should be limited to the details available in the dead player's role PM, the phase during which the player died, and a brief description of the kill method. (example:
Ythill
Mafia Roleblocker (tree-sitter)
, stabbed night 1.
- A sample vanilla townie PM must appear in the mod's ruleset or opening post. It must include the town win condition.
- Role PMs and reveals must include the standard name of the role. If secondary role names or descriptive flavor lines are given in role PMs, such information must be publically available.* It is permissable to provide public secondary names or flavor lines for roles which do not appear in the game.
- Descriptions of a role's abilities must not contain flavor, except that a player with a kill may be told his kill method.
*This could be reworded to require the list to be posted in the thread, but I like the idea of a private list that is shared by PM with people who request information for specific claims.
