I thought it'd be nice to have a thread where people who have run games (especially big ones) can put down some of their best tips for organizing and running. My short stint in Mega Man, with only 15 players, has already inspired me.

1) Excel Spreadsheet - Names and Roles in one handy reference
2) Word Doc with a detailed list of night actions - good for cross-referencing interactions btw characters.

What else might be added?

I admit I haven't used the Excel Spreadsheet - due to the fact that I'm frequently accessing my computer from handhelds and the like, I often find it easier to use word programs - but I know a lot of people do so. What advantages/disadvantages do you find with it?

I live by excel. I use it for school all the time so I naturally used it for organizing my mafia game.

Well, the preset columns make for easy organization. Also, the ability to use multiple sheets lets me have 1 with players in order, a second with characters in order, and a 3rd with characters broken up by affiliation/team. Its pretty useful when you've got an inbox that's full of PMs and need to organize actions. Its probably tricker on a hand-held, though.

I'm about to try to run one. Any tips on distribution of abilities? I'd like to run a balanced game, but it's kinda shootin' in the dark.

I've always used Word documents. It's just easier to manage.

Haven't run any games, but I'm thinking what might be useful from a Monday morning quarterbacking perspective would be to include summary stats from previous games: total players; total good, bad, neutral; number of mafia teams and mason teams; and of course, final outcome, complete with number of players remaining.

That kind of stuff would be useful to get an idea for how balancing works in these games. Also might help to get a kind of "Director's Commentary" from previous game mods as to how they felt their past games went, what went right, what went wrong, what they'd do differently.

I use Word.

I have A LOT of documents now.

1 for night targets, 1 with all the powers and storys and of course one for the main storylines and all the "what ifs".

create and run a game is FAR more fun of what I thought!

I have Excel, and I think can be bether now what you say it... but for now I will keep doing it in Word.

Ok, I have a question. When you make of the mafia team and you pick the don, and the don dies, how is the new don choosen?

I personally would just let the mafia decide amongst themselves.

for what I see it can be in several ways.

-if is part of a storyline if could be the character more important afther the don.
-it could be elected.
-it could be "stoled" (don't know about that but Peers say something about that in the Crisis game)

Cool, that's probably the best way to do it and is fair for the most part.

Also, heres another question. If a character has more then one power, and is blocked, are all powers blocked? I would assume so, but I want to make sure...

YES.

for what I see Block if the more important thing what come first.

Something what I see what I don't notice when I was a player is this:

The ORDER of what happen first is ABSOLUTE important.

Ok, another question. I'm trying to think of a misdirector in my Civil War thread, but anyways, when the misdirector picks a target, how do you choose who the misdirected target will target?

I hope that made some sense...

It's either random, or the misdirector gets to choose.