How about people maybe get 3 or 4 votes (or maybe fewer as there are less people remaining), and vote who they want to keep instead of who to remove?

At the end of day, player with the least amount of votes is eliminated (in case of tie, people who did not vote themselves go first, otherwise the person who voted latest goes)

Probably will get a bit tricky working out the details, and most likely have a whole different dynamic how scum would play this, but might be interesting for a change.

Or just randomly kill someone who did not vote during the day (or at least with a 50% chance of this happening). Mafia first (I think this will give town significantly more power/info, so might need to find something to balance), and then random amongst town.

I think killing off Mafia members first would be a terrible idea, seems to me like it would incentivize Town members to not vote. If all Mafia members vote and a Town member dies instead, Town has a short list of who the Mafia might be.

Hmm, fair point. Back to the drawing board...

Yeah, it seems like it would actually push the Town to not vote as the mod would then start killing off the Mafia for them.
However, I think SC realizes that now.

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(The next part is something the convo lets me segue into but is not “due to Quebbster” I’m saying it so I’m sorry this is attached to a response to him but I didn’t want to make multiple postings and spam the thread).

There’s a misrepresentation going around that the Town has become lousy. That puts down any wins by the opposing side and when the Town wins implies they did so by luck. That’s a terrible put down of people’s ability and play style just because they may not be in a manner embraced by all. (You’ll also note I mention Town wins and that’s because, going through the games of the last few months it’s a pretty close to even split and, in games like K’s Console or Quebbs’ Favourite Moments there were moments well in to the games that things were iffy for the winning side, coming down to a key make or break moment.)

Are the players relying more on powers of late? Yeah, they’re not being so much Sherlock or Colombo - assumably they’re hanging out waiting in adamical’s game - and more CSI. That happens at times and eventually folks are going to get tired of all the ready claiming that’s happening and they’ll start to swing the other direction where even the Towniest of Town may refuse to claim, feeling people need to use their targeting and voting record. That ping-pong match has gone back and forth so many times in the decades I’ve lost count and with many people returning feeling rusty and new players coming in there’s going to be a tendency for it to lean on the powers and claims for a bit.

If there’s apathy thats not always on the players and maybe a mod needs to see if it’s something they’re doing (players, for example, don’t like to feel railroaded). Maybe people are having trouble getting involved with a theme. Perhaps the fact the last few months have seen massive amounts of political arguing in the US - base for many players and affects some outside of it - and the “distraction” of a majour election (not to mention holidays like Hallowe’en) are affecting the energy levels of people to come on here and have further arguments especially when there’s been some heavy vitriol of late. Putting it another way: people are here to play for fun and distraction and if they aren’t feeling it, that’s not likely on the shoulders of the majourity to bear the fault.

So maybe instead of each game ending with someone coming in to say “Town were a bunch of losers” we should instead be congratulating winners or people - whom even if they lost - did something particularly smooth (or fun or witty), give a constructive thought, if needed, about something that maybe wasn’t working out as hoped while still being thankful the mod even went to the effort, and just get ourselves psyched up for the next game. That will improve things far more than demoralizing the base.

I mean...the fact remains that plenty of communities play game with vanilla themes and largely vanilla role lists and the town still wins a good amount of the time.

If a town twiddles their thumbs and goes no yeet because a handful of leader players are dead or mafia and nobody gets a red cop peek, that is absolutely not the host’s fault for failing to make an interesting thematic game because you don’t need an interesting thematic game for players to, you know, play.

I’m not saying that’s happening now. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t played any mafia outside of Champs since it started some 4 months ago.

I’m just saying that I strongly disagree with blaming hosts for player apathy unless the host is doing things like missing deadlines, applying rules inconsistently, etc.

Yeah, these are my thoughts. To blame the mods for player engagement I think is rather weak. If you sign up for a game, no one is forcing you. It is only considerate if you put your name on the list that you play the game. That means getting your actions in on time, and you should be making 5-10 posts per day minimum. If you can't commit to that, don't sign up.

I know the mods of the last few games went through a lot of effort to engage players. Outside of a few quibbles I have already discussed with them privately, I think they did a really bang up job. Morph went way out of his way to make sure anyone that didn't know much on the lore of his game could easily get at least the gist of it and his passion shown through in the writeups. It was pretty impressive for (maybe?) his first game.

For vlad's game, it wasn't even that no one knew the theme, vampires are pretty popular. He even had some interesting mechanics to drive player engagement. But I have gotten comments or questions from both vlad and morph expressing dissatisfaction in the level of engagement on the towns part in their games, and how the mafia could just bank on the town doing nothing to win because that was what was happening, and if there was anything that could be done to change that.

And really, the answer is really no. No matter how much incentive you give to play the game, the only thing that can fix the problem is town stepping up and ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME. I have signed up for plenty of games before I don't care about the theme because I'm supporting a person I like or I just like to play mafia.

Saying the town sucks also doesn't imply the mafia played bad. Giving complements to the winning side doesn't do #### to solve the problem of lazy town. Saying never talking and never voting is a valid strategy is INSANE because the only way to win as town if you never vote people off is to have a crazy hot vig, and then its really just one person on the town playing the game and everyone else is just meat shields. Town needs to engage, question, analyze, and vote.

Apathy is almost always a fault of the player rather than the mod, other than the exceptions that Jack listed. There have been a ton of times I feel like the game is over yet I keep playing anyways, unless the game is completely solved, as happens sometimes in closed theme games. You just need the drive to keep going when things are tough.

But yeah, Rokk, I know I come off as pretty antagonistic lately, but that's because I love the game and the community here and I don't want to see it die again over problems I think can be fixed if people are made aware of them. But you putting the blame of the recent games being kind of bad on the mods is also pretty ####ty. I KNOW the amount of work they put in and they did everything they could to run a good game, and they deserve more props for that.

I noticed a solid amount of apathy since my return. I have attempted to lead by example, and I am pretty sure the new players I have recruited will be very vocal players. Hopefully more players taking initiative will swing the town back in to a less passive play style.

Reread. I didn’t say it was all of the mods. In fact I said people should be thanking mods for the hard work they did to make the game happen.

I am saying there may be something a mod should consider just as players should also be considering. Chances are there’s a mix of factours and for people to just keep going off on the Town fixes nothing. Light every corner when looking for a malfunction. Maybe a Town isn’t submitting actions - and that’s on the Town - or maybe they’re losing interest because the mod is railroading a story over a game by random deaths so the body count rises (that’s on the mod).

It’s a community game which means it’s a community issue and I don’t believe the solution is it’s one side or the other.

I was planning on sitting out this conversation because I don't feel as knowledgeable as you guys, but I just have to say...

THIS.

You have been here longer than some whom are discussing and even if you hadn’t - even if it was your first day - it’s still a community you’ve joined and that gives you every right to join in the conversation.

I know we watched you grow up (and up. And up.) But you’re not a kid who’s not allowed at the adult table. Your viewpoints are as valid as anyone else here. The way I figure it, we’re all the blind sages trying to figure out the elephant by touch so share what you’ve discovered.

The number of times I think a host put forth such a bad job that it made me not want to play their game on this site was like...twice?

The number of times I’ve been a top 3 poster in a game I’m hosting is embarrassingly high. The number of times I felt like the HCRealms town was flat not using all the options at their disposal to locate baddies? At least 30% of games I’ve played.

Again, I haven’t played here in a bit but historically, the apathy problem has fallen squarely on the player end of things.

And again, the bar to be a successful host where success is defined as “not causing player apathy” is ridiculously low. Some sites use bots for it.

And of course DB has been here more than long enough to speak knowledgeably about the state of the community.

I’d also say that HCRealms has historically had some of the most interesting setups and themes of any mafia site, the kinds of themes that stick with you decades after the fact.

I would be incredibly surprised if boring hosting had become a problem here.

Oh, I don’t think “boring” is an issue here. It’s just politer for me to add that in with “examine all angles”.

I will say this:

I won't argue that apathetic towns aren't prevalent, because that would be a lie, but I have seen individual town players such as vigs and powers like that singlehandedly rally everyone back into a victory with just one move. I think it's happened in all three games I've been a mod for in 2020. So even if the town looks screwed early on, I personally don't really lose all hope, either as a townie or the mod watching it all, because who knows!