More Leeway for Normal Flavor

[mith]

I'm open to expanding this somewhat - I am well aware that our current policy can be too restrictive on good mods. That said, there's a reason it's so restrictive (the not-so-good mods). We've had numerous problems in the past with mods thinking that their pet flavor is harmless, when in reality it's game breaking (or just incredibly stupid) - and that's not something we can always catch, even with carefully constructed rules and "normal" reviewers. Thus, we err on the side of gameplay.

(There's also the "Hey! I signed up for a normal game, and I am totally offended by the mod's treatment of witches! If this is normal on this site, I'm leaving!" type issue; the "The mod is spending so much time on flavor that no one else finds interesting that he/she isn't giving the actual gameplay enough attention" issue... probably some others that I am forgetting.)

Anyway, if you guys want to take a stab at putting together a policy in this direction, I will certainly consider it. Some guidelines might be:

Newbie Games are off-limits for anything but Mafia flavor. A user's first experience with this site should not be Fuwochichi vs. the Sandwich Army.
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.
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).
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. Having two sets of role PMs isn't particularly elegant or aesthetically pleasing, though.

[mith]

Lots of people are introduced to the game through Are You A Werewolf?

Sure; but this is mafiascum, not werewolfscum, and I think it's reasonable to limit our introductory games to our most common flavor.

I'm hesitant on this one.

Indeed, this is part of the reason I've never moved it beyond Mafia/Werewolf flavor before now... the boundary between "suitable flavor" and "too wacky" is fuzzy. Definitely open to suggestions.

"No flavor in roles" is really about no game-breaking/twisting flavor in roles, which is a separate problem.

That's the thing - *all* flavor in roles is potentially game-twisting, unless it's public (or unless inelegant rules are added, like "you can't claim flavor" - and those cause as many problems as they fix). Even something as simple as pasted on role name (e.g. "I'm a Army Communications Specialist (Daytalking Mason)") leads to both second-guessing-the-mod (and yes, there is already some of that in closed games anyway; but there's a distinction between "guessing what roles/mechanics/gameplay elements the mod included" and "guessing what name the mod gave to a role") and to the scum needing to come up with reasonable sounding names given the flavor and mod.

(Mafia backstory is less of an issue; it's extremely uncommon for someone to want to strategically claim scum in a game, and even less common that anyone would doubt such a claim.)

Re: translating, I was strictly talking about Open games there. (That is, I don't think it would necessarily affect gameplay to allow flavored PMs in Open games, but I do think it could lead to confusion, or annoyance on the part of those who want to ignore the flavor, so providing a translated version of the PM would be an inelegant option to solve that.)

[mith]

Flay: Right, but modular role PMs don't stop flavor claiming from twisting the game, at least not on their own. Which isn't to say there aren't ways to prevent it, but if we're going to allow it in normal games we need to at least provide inexperienced mods (and even experienced mods are sometimes caught by something unexpected) with the tools to keep their flavor from getting in the way of the game.

The two main ways I've seen it done are "you can't claim flavor" - which is annoying, and usually prompts players to try to edge up to the line without crossing it - and "if you want to fake claim, I'll write you fake flavor", which has worked well for some mods but I could see potential problems there as well (I don't know that players have ever really tested that method).