Newbie Game rules of thumb (F11 specific).

[Zorblag]

So when Troll plays in a newbie game Troll likes to try to avoid having new players make simple mistakes that put the town at a disadvantage. When Troll joins the game Troll will post the following five rules of thumb so long as they still seem relevant (Troll replaces often and sometimes the first four no longer be worth mentioning as claims have already taken place.)

Troll would like comments from experienced players about how reasonable these rules of thumb be as well as questions from less experienced players about why Troll would think these rules be useful if them no be clear. Troll plans to link to this thread when Troll posts these in future games.

Remember that you should not talk about current games outside the game thread. If you're a new player looking here please don't talk about anything happening in your game right now.

If people could say what them agree with, what them disagree with and what guidelines them feel should be followed in newbie games played in the F11 setup Troll would be appreciative. Remember that the goal here is to avoid simple mistakes which hurt the town's chances of winning. This isn't meant to be a general strategy guide but rather a short list of things to avoid which might not be obvious the first time someone plays the game.

Troll's brief rules of thumb for the F11 setup

Here are some rules of thumb that I like a lot for the current newbie setup. There are no absolute rules in mafia and others might disagree about some of them (and I'm happy to discuss them so long as we don't detract from the game itself by doing it) but I'm a fairly traditional/conservative player and find these to be useful.

1. Townies without power roles should not lie about their role except in very specific situations (which are unlikely to come up in newbie games.) Lying to save yourself from a lynch as a vanilla townie is much more likely to hurt the town than to help in the long run.

2. Townies without power roles should generally not claim to be vanilla townies. This makes it easier for the scum to figure out who the power roles are if there are any. Assuming that townies are following rule 1 they should avoid making claims other than simply being a pro-town role unless there is some strategy that the Town is using (e.g. massclaim at LyLo) or they are about to be lynched anyhow and keeping their non-power role status no longer makes it easier for the scum to find power roles.

3. If you suspect someone else of having a power role you shouldn't out them. Support them if you see a way to do it that doesn't out them and watch carefully to see if there are reasons to reassess your belief. Leave the claim of the power role to them unless you think that they will be lynched while they are away and wouldn't be able to make the claim them self.

4. If you do have a power role you should keep it hidden for now. Do not let yourself get lynched without revealing it but there is no reason to advertise it at the start in the setups that we could be in. If the scum know who have the power roles now they have the power to lynch or role block powers during the night and negate their usefulness.

5. If you're town, don't self hammer. This kills a pro town role and hurts the town's chances in the long run. It's much better to try to defend yourself or at the very least force the other players to place the last vote. There are exceptions when a deadline is involved but in general don't think that you're doing the town any favors by self hammering.

If any of those are unclear please do ask about them.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Oman]

I would add something along the lines of "Do not be afraid to lynch: A well reasoned, well discussed lynch it is the only tool the town has to defeat the mafia. Paralyzing yourself hurts the town more than you think."

I dunno, that is just general advice I spread to my newbie games.

[Zorblag]

That do be important advice there Oman. Be willing to vote/lynch, no lynch hurts the town day one, lurking by the town enables lurking by scum, etc ... are all pieces of advice that can be passed on and are worth saying but them no be what Troll be trying to highlite here.

If someone isn't lynching at any one particular point it probably doesn't hurt the town in a way that can't be corrected with an explanation after it occurs.

Fake claiming a power role as town to prevent your lynch, claiming to be a vanilla townie for no good reason, outing power roles, self-revealing as a power role before you need to and self hammering all hurt the town as soon as they happen. Pointing out what the mistake was after the fact doesn't allow it to be corrected or mitigated in any way. It be those types of things that Troll be trying to get at here rather than what generally makes for good play.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Porochaz]

Rule 2 I would make clearer otherwise sounds good.

[Zorblag]

Troll no be particularly adept at clarity of statement so Troll invites any rephrasing that others would be willing to offer.

Troll be going for a short statement of what to avoid and a very brief reason why it should be avoided. Perhaps:

2. Don't claim that you're a vanilla townie if you are one unless you are going to be lynched regardless of your claim or there is some strategic reason (e.g. the town is mass claiming at LyLo.) Unforced vanilla claims make it easier for the scum to find power roles.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Oman]

Roger, Troll, I get what you're looking for, I'll let you know if I can think of anything more that fits your mold.

[Elmo]

hi all let's get to lynching mafia

ok cool i think so too

hmm

vote elmo

oh okay

unvote

sorry

well i don't know why

well anyone could be mafia and no-one really did anything suspicious yet so id on't know

but i don't know whose scum!! how do you expect me to know i don't find anyone suspicious yet

wat is 'lurking'

well i don't have much too say

i dunno

yeah

okay

Don't do this.

At the start of the game, no-one knows shit. Please don't be the newbie who sits there saying "but I don't know whose scum!!" over and over. Attack someone for picking their nose if you need to. The "random vote stage" is an urban legend - you are doing stuff to get useful (informative) reactions and then doing more stuff based partially on them. You can randomly go psycho on someone for basically no reason on day eight for both fun and profit, so why wait? If this necessitates gnawing on someone's shoulder and seeing what people do about it, go for it.

This would be much less of a problem in the current meta if people lynched before deadline ever, so that bandwagons early in the day actually had teeth, because then people would sit up straight when a semi-random bandwagon formed on them instead of rolling their eyes and waiting for the focus to shift off them. And then everyone sat twiddling thumbs until, hey, the deadline's getting close and now we actually need a scapegoat and suddenly the discussion of

who do we lynch

becomes ten times as interesting to the players, which prompts the kind of productive pressure that would have been really great 48 hours into the game. </mini-rant>

[Vi]

ITT, Elmo demonstrates why 3-week deadlines are abominations.

[ortolan]

your rules of thumb look fairly uncontroversial, good stuff

[Shanba]

ITT, Elmo demonstrates why 3-week deadlines are abominations.

Lies. There's nothing inherently wrong with three week deadlines. The problem is with people who believe that a three week deadline means you

must

use at least 18 days before lynching or you're somehow not getting value for your effort. It's like, we've become so focused on winning that we've ended up becoming too conservative, trying to eke out every possible advantage, discuss every possible point and every possible player (that bugs me. No one has mentioned A, he must be scummy. No, that's rubbish. Go crawl in a hole and die,) and use up every last second of the day or we'll be cutting off discussion and somehow handing scum an advantage.

An alternative explanation is that we've all started believing so sincerely in our own scumhunting abilities that we no longer compromise, and we no longer bandwagon. If we are voting for someone, that is the correct person to be voting for and we just have to wait for everyone else to get on board. The wagoner is frowned upon, accused, suspected when really he's doing us all a favour by looking beyond his own beliefs. Only deadlines force us to compromise; until deadline, we may as well keep voting for the guy we want lynched.

I'm tempted to go the opposite direction and start running games without deadlines. That would force people to either lynch or let the game stall indefinitely. If people know that there's always a deadline round the corner, they become dependent and can't play without one, and thus can't manage their time effectively (some days you do need more discussion).

[Oman]

We are becoming obsessed with "more discussion" though. In Newbies or Minis (remind me to post when two games are over) we constantly cry for "more discussion!"

[Supermouse The Rodent]

Troll's words are tech, now that point 2 has been reworded. I think trying to get each point a) unambiguous and b) down to the fewest possible words will only help, but I agree with every point and the reasons given. I'd suggest rewordings but I've got an assignment to hand in this week with a very tight word count, so while I am becoming more practised at concision, I really can't be arsed doing more homework practice.

Straying from the main topic: When reading games, I've noticed a pattern of newbies from other sites being used to very short days and a general confusion as to how long a day should take. There seems to be very often a flurry of activity followed by a sharp set-down and ending in a prolonged bout of lurkiness, which may or may not return to a flurry of activity at deadline. I think it's a factor in the pattern elmo and shanba are discussing. I think that implementing a policy of no deadlines would actually make this worse.

The absolute best mechanic I've seen for stopping this was the battery marker that Vi used in the Vi-pod game (someone else with less of a headache can link, it's nominated in the scummies). It provides constant feedback to players as to how much activity they're expected to be producing, and I thought I saw a much more even game as far as activity goes, with lynches lacking that frenzy of desperation common in other games.

I think the battery deadline marker would be a truly useful addition to Newbie games, to teach a body of incoming players how to pace themselves for this site. I don't think it needs the graphics, even though I liked them a whole lot. I think just something like 'current activity is (rapid|good|lacking), battery is therefore reduced to (%age).'

[Vi]

The absolute best mechanic I've seen for stopping this was the battery marker that Vi used in the Vi-pod game (someone else with less of a headache can link, it's nominated in the scummies). It provides constant feedback to players as to how much activity they're expected to be producing, and I thought I saw a much more even game as far as activity goes, with lynches lacking that frenzy of desperation common in other games.

I think the battery deadline marker would be a truly useful addition to Newbie games, to teach a body of incoming players how to pace themselves for this site. I don't think it needs the graphics, even though I liked them a whole lot. I think just something like 'current activity is (rapid|good|lacking), battery is therefore reduced to (%age).'

The problem with the battery mechanic - to borrow Incog-backup-mod's words - is that you have to be OCD to use it well (and on the same level of issue-ness, you have to update close to every day).
I can imagine plenty of mods who think vote counts are a chore and forget they have a prod policy to laugh the idea out of the topic.

[Death By Moogles]

ITT, Elmo demonstrates why 3-week deadlines are abominations.

Lies. There's nothing inherently wrong with three week deadlines. The problem is with people who believe that a three week deadline means you

must

use at least 18 days before lynching or you're somehow not getting value for your effort. It's like, we've become so focused on winning that we've ended up becoming too conservative, trying to eke out every possible advantage, discuss every possible point and every possible player (that bugs me. No one has mentioned A, he must be scummy. No, that's rubbish. Go crawl in a hole and die,) and use up every last second of the day or we'll be cutting off discussion and somehow handing scum an advantage.

An alternative explanation is that we've all started believing so sincerely in our own scumhunting abilities that we no longer compromise, and we no longer bandwagon. If we are voting for someone, that is the correct person to be voting for and we just have to wait for everyone else to get on board. The wagoner is frowned upon, accused, suspected when really he's doing us all a favour by looking beyond his own beliefs. Only deadlines force us to compromise; until deadline, we may as well keep voting for the guy we want lynched.

I'm tempted to go the opposite direction and start running games without deadlines. That would force people to either lynch or let the game stall indefinitely. If people know that there's always a deadline round the corner, they become dependent and can't play without one, and thus can't manage their time effectively (some days you do need more discussion).

That's interesting! The forum where I usually play typically has a 24 hour day and a 12 hour night. It works well, and people generally satisfied with it. When I signed up for a game here and saw the three week limits I was pretty shocked! I mean. That is so much time. Then again, we just go with whoever has the most votes at the end of the day rather than waiting for a majority. It will be interesting seeing how differently games play out here.

[The Fonz]

We are becoming obsessed with "more discussion" though. In Newbies or Minis (remind me to post when two games are over) we constantly cry for "more discussion!"

See the recently completed mini 888 for an example of me flipping out over that particular one.

Calling for 'more discussion' is inherently scummy, since it is trying to stall the game for no particular reason, whilst also trying to 'look town.'

Asking for more discussion

of a specific point

, trying to get more people on record about it, saying 'I'd like to hear from X about Y' is not.

[Ectomancer]

The absolute best mechanic I've seen for stopping this was the battery marker that Vi used in the Vi-pod game (someone else with less of a headache can link, it's nominated in the scummies). It provides constant feedback to players as to how much activity they're expected to be producing, and I thought I saw a much more even game as far as activity goes, with lynches lacking that frenzy of desperation common in other games.

I think the battery deadline marker would be a truly useful addition to Newbie games, to teach a body of incoming players how to pace themselves for this site. I don't think it needs the graphics, even though I liked them a whole lot. I think just something like 'current activity is (rapid|good|lacking), battery is therefore reduced to (%age).'

The problem with the battery mechanic - to borrow Incog-backup-mod's words - is that you have to be OCD to use it well (and on the same level of issue-ness, you have to update close to every day).
I can imagine plenty of mods who think vote counts are a chore and forget they have a prod policy to laugh the idea out of the topic.

Those mods just shoot themselves in the foot trying to be lazy because they then have to follow and check back on a game that takes 6 months when it could have taken 6 weeks

[Ectomancer]

How about a deadline that says "Deadline in 1 week + 1 day per player still alive. If a majority has not been reached, the player with the fewest posts in game will be auto-lynched. Spam posting will result in a modkill. (don't taunt the mod)"

[Netopalis]

I think that the issue with the whole "More discussion" thing is that many ICs and SEs, while perfectly good players, simply don't know how to teach - they fail to impart on the newbies in their games that discussion is required from *all* players, and that it's not acceptable to just sit back and let the experienced players do all the talking.

[Vel-Rahn Koon]

ITT, Elmo demonstrates why 3-week deadlines are abominations.

Lies. There's nothing inherently wrong with three week deadlines. The problem is with people who believe that a three week deadline means you

must

use at least 18 days before lynching or you're somehow not getting value for your effort. It's like, we've become so focused on winning that we've ended up becoming too conservative, trying to eke out every possible advantage, discuss every possible point and every possible player (that bugs me. No one has mentioned A, he must be scummy. No, that's rubbish. Go crawl in a hole and die,) and use up every last second of the day or we'll be cutting off discussion and somehow handing scum an advantage.

An alternative explanation is that we've all started believing so sincerely in our own scumhunting abilities that we no longer compromise, and we no longer bandwagon. If we are voting for someone, that is the correct person to be voting for and we just have to wait for everyone else to get on board. The wagoner is frowned upon, accused, suspected when really he's doing us all a favour by looking beyond his own beliefs. Only deadlines force us to compromise; until deadline, we may as well keep voting for the guy we want lynched.

I'm tempted to go the opposite direction and start running games without deadlines. That would force people to either lynch or let the game stall indefinitely. If people know that there's always a deadline round the corner, they become dependent and can't play without one, and thus can't manage their time effectively (some days you do need more discussion).

ITT thread we learn why Shanba's title is "So win".

Although I disagree (for Newbie games anyway) on no deadline games. The players just let the game drag on and on, not doing anything, until you impose a deadline. So the game just takes an extra month or so without deadlines, and no improvement in play.

Z: please note that sef-hammering as Town will most likely get you banned from the Newbie queue. It's a bull$h!t play and does absolutely nothing to help your team. I just don't want that to be something that a Town player even considers.

As scum, fine. Self-hammering may help minimize the ability of the Town to link you to your partner, so it is playing to your win condition in this case.

Also, remember these are Newbies. Make it (it being the rules of thumb you have) as short and sweet as possible.

Vi, I'd like to see the battery mechanic, maybe we can adopt it.



As for shorter than 3-week deadlines: This is the one point I am not willing to deviate from. When we had the discussion about the 3-week deadline rule last spring, I determined that 3 weeks was the minimum for Newbie games because we get a LOT of replacements. People replace out of Newbie games because they don't like the game, they don't like the speed at which we play, they "forget" about the game, they're @$$holes, etc. You typically don't get this in the other Queues because the players there know what to expect and what is expected of them. And to be honest, if we could force people to play a Newbie game before moving on so they didn't flake out of the other Queues for stupid reasons I think that would be best, but currently there's no way to track that information efficiently.

Anyway, back to the deadline length. Most Mods give 3 days or so before prodding. Then you give a day or two for a response. Then you have to find a replacment. That whole process can take anywhere from 5 to 10 days. That's 1/4 to 1/2 of a game day with a 3-week deadline that a player has had ZERO participation, making it impossible for the rest of the players to get a read on him. Newbie games will keep the 21 day long Days for the forseeable future.

The ideas in this thread are great, and I hope people find there way here. I may need to link this thread in the main Queue.

[Netopalis]

I'd like to add a rule....

NEVER no-lynch in a newbie game on the first day. Ever.

[Thesp]

ITT, Elmo demonstrates why 3-week deadlines are abominations.

Lies. There's nothing inherently wrong with three week deadlines. The problem is with people who believe that a three week deadline means you

must

use at least 18 days before lynching or you're somehow not getting value for your effort. It's like, we've become so focused on winning that we've ended up becoming too conservative, trying to eke out every possible advantage, discuss every possible point and every possible player (that bugs me. No one has mentioned A, he must be scummy. No, that's rubbish. Go crawl in a hole and die,) and use up every last second of the day or we'll be cutting off discussion and somehow handing scum an advantage.

An alternative explanation is that we've all started believing so sincerely in our own scumhunting abilities that we no longer compromise, and we no longer bandwagon. If we are voting for someone, that is the correct person to be voting for and we just have to wait for everyone else to get on board. The wagoner is frowned upon, accused, suspected when really he's doing us all a favour by looking beyond his own beliefs. Only deadlines force us to compromise; until deadline, we may as well keep voting for the guy we want lynched.

I'm tempted to go the opposite direction and start running games without deadlines. That would force people to either lynch or let the game stall indefinitely. If people know that there's always a deadline round the corner, they become dependent and can't play without one, and thus can't manage their time effectively (some days you do need more discussion).

I agree with the first two paragraphs 100%. As for the third, I'd totally be accepting of it if I had all the time in the world, and replacements weren't an issue. (I think Yaw's No Exit mafia ran with no deadlines, fittingly.)

[Vel-Rahn Koon]

This is an old thread with some of the same ideas in it, starting with MBL's post 61:

viewtopic.php?p=531639#531639

[Vi]

Vi, I'd like to see the battery mechanic, maybe we can adopt it.

With all due respect, I would like to veto that.

I am willing to make an exception to my previous 3-week deadline hate for Newbie games due to the higher rate of replacement. While I agree with Shanba that they're not inherently bad, we can either change the people that are making it a problem or the issue that makes the people the problem.

[Porochaz]

We are becoming obsessed with "more discussion" though. In Newbies or Minis (remind me to post when two games are over) we constantly cry for "more discussion!"

I agree totally but cant say much more on this right now.

[Vel-Rahn Koon]

Vi, I'd like to see the battery mechanic, maybe we can adopt it.

With all due respect, I would like to veto that.

I am willing to make an exception to my previous 3-week deadline hate for Newbie games due to the higher rate of replacement. While I agree with Shanba that they're not inherently bad, we can either change the people that are making it a problem or the issue that makes the people the problem.

After reading over it I don't see how we could adopt it. It would be too arbitrary to apply evenly across all games. I like the mechanic though!