OMG Red flag looks very interesting
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If we are going to make friendly games for newcomers, I think games with more standard rules and roles would work better.
If we are going to play full vanilla, I think something like “Everybody is in a neighborhood that consists of people up or below them on playerlist.” can be done.
I mean like if player list is
tn
Gtacc
Elli
Chesskid
DS
Hoods are:
Tn gtacc elli
Gtacc elli ck
Elli ck ds
Ck ds tn
Ds tn gtacc
I don’t know if it’s ok for newbies, but I think it is a good flavor for vanilla games.
Nah I actually disagree with this. The notion they have on mafiascum and elsewhere that games for newcomers should be for learning skills is one we won’t be following - they should be about having fun and learning to enjoy the game. My first mafia games were all nutty role madness games - would not have kept playing or probably even signed up if they were more vanilla. Actions were certainly not optimal and people did crazy shit but it was fun and it made me want to play more and eventually learn more. (Do you see a new player like Tier wanting to play a vanilla game? Hell no)
Obviously SOME new people will prefer vanilla/simpler stuff but I think if anything the distribution will be weighted less towards that side than with ppl who have played longer.
Regardless there’ll be no requirement on setup type for friendly games here outside of no host lies (so at least everyone has someone they can ask and expect honest questions from) so the setups that are marked friendly will be up to the host and we’ll run ones that match demand/eventual research on retention.
At the start we’ll have a flowchart or quiz for newcomers and we’ll recc them to whatever game type/setup we think they’ll enjoy most.
more on topic I’ll set up a week long deadline + friendly tag with variable deadline thing soon. Won’t start until the current game storm settles down a bit.
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im thinking i could rerun completely unoriginal with different powers and tag it friendly
Hmm my first times let me think.
In my first game, I was a PGO and I had a lie detector. I died the day I used my PGO because another player had alternative timeline maker and killed me. However, that timeline maker had a catch and someone found it and we got back to our own timeline and I was alive. I also killed the neutral killer (who was creating alternative timelines)
I guess that was fun but I had no idea what I was doing. Probably because I only read 3 pages of 150 paged thread but whatever.
I think having too many night roles might make people rely on their night abilities instead of discussing. Donner party and guns & roses aren’t role madness though so maybe they are better?
Donner Party/Guns and Roses are pitched at our existing crew anyway - “Friendly” doesn’t necessarily mean for new people.
Don’t think having fun with night actions and having discussion being less important is a bad thing - some people find it enjoyable and good on them. Hell a good first game might even have close to no real discussion and a bunch of zapping each other with powers.
Being forced to read 150 pages probably isn’t fun for most people though. 
I think for a lot of people the progression is “hey there’s this cool game where people lie to each other and use powers” and only after a bit of fuckery do they wonder how they can actually get better at it etc.
We believe the important thing for new people is for them to be an environment where they can have fun and figure shit out without people getting angry and being toxic (hence the friendly tag) - the specific setup and game type just depends on the person.
Also there’s another thing that we think is super important (reducing downtime between signup and being able to do stuff) and we have a few experiments we want to try for that that’ll be posted fairly soon.
100% agree with this by the way. Where I started playing we basically only run games with weird-ass mechanics and I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it if they were all vanilla.
Role madness for sure
I think I mostly agree here. I remember it being a bit disorienting as a new player in a complex game (and there were definitely some moments of “dang, I wish I had understood what I was doing better, I would have made different choices”), but those crazy complex ones are the memorable games that formed strong positive associations.
On a personal note (and I know this isn’t true for all), the flavor was a huge part. My first game I was completely unfamiliar with the source material (Disgaea), but I was a frickin’ exploding penguin!!! Second game was Balloon Debate Mafia, where I was Ivan the Terrible trying to convince the town to throw Einstein, Mozart, and Richard Garfield over the side of the hot air balloon. It was solid modding with fun flavor that got me hooked long enough for me to realize how much I appreciated the game itself.
Only now that I consider myself a veteran do I appreciate the challenge of a mountainous or basic open setup (but I still like flavor in those).
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I agree in that flavored games (themed games) tend to be the ones I remember most
I’m broken in a very weird way and tend to remember moments in near vanilla games a lot better. I’m still down for most stuff, just pluggin’ the near vanilla agenda.
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