Newbie/Mentor Game (gauging interest)

Sup dudes.

So I was thinking of hosting a minigame (since I don't want to have to deal with participation points and achievements) that would have the following premise:


Newbie players sign up as newbies. A newbie can be anyone who has played less than a certain amount of games, or just someone who's not confident in their mafia skills and would like a mentor to help them out.

Veteran players sign up to be either a solo player, or a mentor. Or both, and I'll pick which role they are based on numbers.

When the game starts, newbie players will be paired up with mentors. Only the newbie will be able to post in thread and send actions, but they'll be in a PM alliance with the mentor who can give them advice on how to act and what to post in thread. Veteran solo players will just play normally, and are mostly there to pad the player list. Depending on numbers, mafia newbies might have just one mentor between the lot of them since they're all in an alliance anyway.



1. Anonymity

One option I was considering was using the mask accounts from Luxaria's masquerade game to have all players be anonymous. There would be no mask switching; everyone would just get their account and password and that would just be their account for the whole game. I'd like to downplay the possible roleplay aspect, since the point would be to learn to play mafia, not to cause confusion.

Why have masks at all, then? Well, mostly because there will be veteran players playing as solo players, and I'd like them to not be an immediate target just based off their usernames. Additionally, I think it'd help break down the distinction between "newbie with mentor" and "veteran solo player" and help put everyone on the same level, at least in the beginning.

Obviously the biggest flaw here is that if we're going to have newbies in this game who are entirely new to this forum, the mask thing might REALLY confuse them.

2. Day Start

To give everyone a chance to play, I'm thinking of having it start on a day phase, or else having N0 be a no NK night. Not sure if this is a good idea or not.

3. Role Powers

I was just gonna do a bare bones open role game with like, a doctor, and maybe a detective or stunner depending on player counts. But I'm open to ideas here too.

4. Interest

Would you actually be interested in playing a game like this?

Do you have any friends who aren't currently on the forum, that you think you could drag into a game like this?

Throw words at me. I would like to hear from you.

I've broadcast my interest in the game already. I would definitely sign up as "Place me wherever, senpai!" I like the idea of re-using the masks for anonymity, or any set of dummy accounts for the sake of producing an anonymous theme.

After hosting the Masquerade, though, I can definitely see the concerns with confusing newer players (if we can grab any) with the mask accounts. I know at least half of my players accidentally posted on their main accounts over a mask account. I know someone on mafia ran the game in two different browsers, using one for their main account, and the other for their mask account? I think? Hmm..

Role powers sound fine.

I'll try contacting some of my old roleplay buddies to see if any are interested in this kind of thing. I don't know many other people to ask. I've tried my video gaming clique, but none have been receptive to the idea. I'll see what I can grab.

Ideally, since there's no mask switching, there'd be no logging in and out involved. We can just wipe the PMs from the accounts if we need to reuse them for something else. So that's one less concern, possibly.

Luxaria wrote:
After hosting the Masquerade, though, I can definitely see the concerns with confusing newer players (if we can grab any) with the mask accounts. I know at least half of my players accidentally posted on their main accounts over a mask account.

Hey now, it want that bad. I only posted on the wrong account three times!
...and almost did several other times.

Though yeah, I think it'll be less of an issue this time of PMs are handled through the masks, as it was the need to switch back and forth that tripped me up. And I do like the idea of using the masks for this, as I noticed the anonymity actually helped some of us out of our shells, even despite the bizarre, often baffling nature of the Masquerade.

Not really sure how to handle N0, myself. On the one hand, using it as we normally would runs the following risk:

"Yay, a mentor game that will finally tech me how to do this game I've been having fun with, but flailing at!"
*Dead on N0*
"Aww..."

On the other hand, I recall N0 my first game. I had a stunner role, knew it could be very handy...but hesitated on using it N0. I knew it could help, maybe block a kill, but was afraid maybe I'd block a protector or investigator instead, and has no one to really consult, and, grahg.

So I see N0 being needed as a learning opportunity, since it can be pivotal in hope the game starts (or at least can feel that way), but could also screw someone out of their own learning opportunity, if N0 is run line normal.

...Man, I wish that table could have been more helpful. XD Yeah, I have no answer, but as a n00b, those are my observations. And I do think roles would be good, to help people learn either how to use them, or how to deduce/obfuscate the truth from role use information from rollover.

Oh, yeah, also, I have interest as a peasant, newbie.

After sitting on the idea for a bit, I think it might be nice to have all the standard abilities in there just so that everyone can learn what all the roles do. I know New Beginnings maf just had a doctor, and then a few people came out of that game going "okay so how do I detective, what is bus driver, why is jail?"

So I guess... Standard roles would be things like doctor, detective, stunner, vigilante, bulletproof, jailer... Maybe a redirect? (Not a bus driver but a straight up redirect, since bus drivers tend to confuse newbies.) In any case it'll be open roles with a description of what all the roles do in the main post.

I really like the idea of N0 stun instead of NK, especially if there's a town detective (gives maf someone to aim for if they're not going the mindgame-y stun self route) and a town stunner (was this stun the maf stun or the town stun? If there's only one stun, did maf just not send in a stun or did they get blocked?).

If I go with the masquerade masks, I'll give really explicit instructions on how to use them. (tl;dr stay logged in, communicate with your mentor and the host via masks, etc.) But I am really glad to hear that the anonymity helped people be more confident.

One thing I'm possibly concerned about is everyone straight up roleclaiming and finding the mafia that way, since I know that was an issue back in vdex games when everyone had unique roles. Possible way to mitigate this would be to list out all of the roles, but not say which ones are mafia roles and which ones are town roles. That way if someone claims stunner you wouldn't know if they were town stun or maf stun.

Kiyoko wrote:Possible way to mitigate this would be to list out all of the roles, but not say which ones are mafia roles and which ones are town roles. That way if someone claims stunner you wouldn't know if they were town stun or maf stun.

This could work. I think the straight-forward roles make the most sense. Miller and bus driver I'd probably leave out because that gets to be way too confusing even for people that are more familiar with the game. We want to encourage newer players (HOPEFULLY WE GET SOME? I'm trying so hard right now with like 6-7 people), not frustrate them. So I think the standard and vanilla "Target X to do Y, this shows up in rollover" would be best. Do we really need a doctor if we have a jailer? I suppose that means jailer could be on either side, though. Hmm. Having some vanilla towns isn't bad?

I'm kind of ehh about softclaiming, because it seems to me that in past games, sometimes "soft"claiming turned into just going "Here's a hint, guess what I am. No, but here's another hint. No again, here's another hint. Hmm, maybe, because I can't say actually yes outright." until someone guessed it right. I don't mean to discount softclaiming entirely because I think there is a lot to be said for it, but I think learning the kind of subtlety required for effective softclaiming on top of everything else might be a bit much.

I don't actually know how many players to expect for a game like this, but I'll definitely base roles around the amount of players we'll have. Maybe I'll do something like new beginnings maf where I unlocked new roles when we hit a minimum amount of players.

Ah...I'm definitely interested in joining this! Love the idea and some of us definitely need some help figuring out mafia stuff.

I'm sure that I've embarrassed myself quite a lot by being clueless haha~

I don't think there will be an issue with the masks. Hmm...someone might mess up once or twice but I don't think it will matter in the end. (The Masquerade game wasn't affected by it anyway.)

Starting with D1 is a nice idea, since everyone will have a chance to discuss properly. I don't think a lot of information is given when someone is killed N0 anyway. Well, I guess it depends, but this is a newbie game. xD

Ah, is this going to be a closed role game?

I'm thinking open roles but hidden alignments? (Like I'll say "jailer" but I won't say if it's a maf or a town jailer.)

Whatever's fine with me really. I just want a senpai.