A Guide for Gamerunners

Pedro · Apr 16, 2018

The purpose of this guide is to help designers during the entire process of running their games in the future. In here, you may see things you already know by looking at other games, but you will also learn how to manage your own game make a great experience for your players.

Commitment

Running a game is a task that may take multiple weeks. Your presence will be required at the start of each phase to give information to the players, but you will also may be needed at any time if a phase ends earlier than expected, or any other issue arises in your game that needs to be solved. You become responsible for the enjoyment of dozens of players and spectators, as well as the image of our community, so please consider these requirements before agreeing to run a game. IF you think you may struggle with the schedule, seek a co-mod; people are usually happy to help. We all want to see successful games.
The Modchat

Around the time sign-ups start for your game, you will be invited to a private channel on our Discord (you will need a Discord account if you don’t have one already) that only current gamerunners and members of our moderation team can access. Modchat is a support channel, and will be the moderation’s line of communication with you; if you aren’t sure whether you should do something or not, talk with the moderators first, as they have seen many games being run before and can recognize common problems and guide you on any situation that may happen. That improves the quality of your game and makes running it a less stressful task. Mods are there to help you and to offer support, or even just to chat a little about the game progress. You’re never alone when you run a game.
Choosing a schedule for your game

While announcing your game to the community, you will have to decide on a schedule to use for the Day and Night phases in your game.
In previous years, those schedules would only come in two variations: games would either have Day and Night phases with the same length (48 hours for each, for example), or Day phases slightly longer than Night phases (72 hours for Day phases and 48 hours for Night phases, for example).
Lately, our community started using a third method of scheduling game phases which is what we call the "Hecht rhythm". This method uses 48 hours for Day phases, a 24 hour Night phase in the middle of the week, and a 48 hour Night phase during the weekend. Below is a better representation of all methods:

Our community is usually inactive during the weekends, so the Hecht rhythm was created as a way to counteract that. Know that you are responsible for choosing a schedule that best serves your and your players' needs.
Creating a countdown image

You will need to inform your players when every phase will begin and end, so they can adjust their schedules to participate in the game. Because we have people from many different countries (and time zones) in our community, we use a countdown timers that get updated every second to show the remaining time until the next phase and/or what the specified time will be in common time zones.
There are two timers that we normally use:

One option is https://pending.me.uk/. Here is an example:

Another one is http://www.secondapps.com/countdown/. Here is an example:

And finally, a third option is https://www.sendtric.com/:
Creating your game threads

To prepare your game for your players and spectators, when creating the associated OT, you should follow a common structure used in all of our games:
- Your thread title should follow this standard:
  
  <Name of your game> Mafia - <thread subtitle>
  
  Here are some examples:
  Game of Thrones Mafia - We're All Bastards Here
  Sneakers Mafia - The battle for your stinky, ugly feet
  Monopoly Mafia - Proletariat of the World Unite
- The first three posts of the game thread need to be made by you, and they should at least have the following information, in order:
  - First post should include: the game banner, initial flavor text, the name of the gamerunner(s) and game watchers who will be supporting your game, player list*, and the sample role PM
  - Second post should include: our updated rules, which can be found in a thread on Outer Mafia (any game specific rules you might want to add should be placed at the bottom)
    ATTENTION: Just as your players will be asked to follow these rules, you cannot start your game without learning them all. Players will expect you to work under our community's standards when reacting to a situation in your game.
  - Third post should include: a link to the vote tool so players always have access to current and past vote counts, and a countdown for the start of the game, which can be removed later
As for the private threads that will need to be created on Outer Mafia, send a message to a member of the OM Team, detailing which threads need to be created (Spectator? Mafia? Gossip? Neighbors?), how they should be titled, and which players will need access to read and/or post in them. If your setup requires the creation of any Outer Mafia account, tell them explicitly how this account will function.
They can only support you if they understand what you are asking of them.

* Fireblend's vote tool (more on it below) will read the player list to keep track of their information during the game. Because of this, you should display your player list in this format:
Code:
```
[highlight]
!player_list
[Pronoun] Player1 - Timezone
[Pronoun] Player2 - Timezone
[Pronoun] Player3 - Timezone
!player_list
[/highlight]
```
For example:
Code:
```
[highlight]
!player_list
[He/him] Pedro - GMT-3
[He/him] Fireblend - GMT-6
!player_list
[/highlight]
```
Sending role PMs

After your game threads are created, you can send all the role PMs approved by your reviewers to your players. Always ask them to confirm if they received the PMs from you, so you know that everyone is ready to start playing. If you need to make any changes to your role PMs, please clear adjustments with your reviewers or modchat first.

After sending the PMs, also check if all your players have an Outer Mafia account. Since, in theory, only Mafia members must use Outer Mafia during the game to chat with their teammates, a player not having an OM account will imply that they do not belong to the Mafia team.
In a previous game, a player said in the game thread that they didn't own an OM account, and thus was correctly seen as Town by all the other players. It's best to avoid this type of situation.
Vote counting

Since Season 11, we use a tool created by Fireblend to automatically count votes in a game thread and produce a parsed and formatted list of votes ready to be shared, making this process quick and simple. The tool can be found here: https://vote.fireblend.com/.

To use it, you need to append your game thread’s ID to the end of the URL above.
Example: https://vote.fireblend.com/berserk-mafia-ot-ceremony-of-the-eclipse.3712.

This tool works by looking for specific commands throughout the thread. These commands are identified through being highlighted with color, so be careful not to accidentally issue any of the following commands when writing in color or it may break this tool.

For you, the gamerunner, the commands are:

Day X Begins Where X is any string. It can be a number, or a written word. Needs to be used at the beginning of each day phase;
Day X Ends Where X is any string. It can be a number, or a written word. Needs to be used at the end of each day phase.

For votes to be valid, your players need to use these commands:

Vote: X Where X is any string. It can only be used during an active day phase (after a Day Begins post and before a Day Ends one);
Unvote: X Same restrictions as above. It removes the last active vote from the user. It's not necessary to use this command before every new Vote.

Some game designs include roles with their votes counting as two (or even three!). For those situations, the tool above accepts as votes the commands Double: X and Triple: X.
Resolving night actions

Here’s a template for an easy way to keep track of the night actions in your game. It was created by Roytheone during Batman Mafia, and has been used by other gamerunners since then.
The information below is taken from Hecht’s excellent Modding Lessons Doc, which is in turn taken from the MafiaScum.net wiki:

In general,
1. Find an action (or a passive modifier, such as Bulletproof) such that its effect cannot possibly be modified by any other action.
2. Resolve it.
3. Repeat from step 1 until all actions are resolved.
General role priority
1. Copy
2. Hide
3. Switch
4. Block
5. Redirect
6. Protect
7. Miscellaneous
8. Kill
9. Recruit
10. Inspect
Actions lower in the list can be affected by actions higher in the list.

Role priority examples
Copy: Doppelganger
Hide: Commuter, Hider
Switch: Switcher
Block: Roleblocker, Jailor
Redirect: Witch, Lightning Rod, Redirector
Protect: Doctor, Bodyguard, CPR Doctor, Armor Usage (from Armorer), Status Effect Remover, Active Bulletproof
Miscellaneous: Arsonist Douse, Messenger, Janitor, Post Restrictor, Hypnotist, Framer, Absorber, Vote Remover, Vote Thief, Medium, Armorer, Chat Blocker, Vote Spy
Kill: Mafia Faction Kill, Vigilante, Serial Killer, Arsonist Kill, Poisoner, Veteran, CPR Doctor
Recruit: Recruiter, Cultist
Inspect: Tracker, Watcher, Voyeur, Motion Detector, Follower, Alignment Cop, Role Cop

Exceptions
For the most part, the list above is a solid guideline. There is one role that tends to throw a wrench in the works, the Roleblocker (and to an extent, the Jailor). While the Roleblocker takes its action before most of the rest of the list, there are some considerations. A Roleblocker would have its target changed if its target was hit by a Switcher, but if the Roleblocker targets the Switcher, then the Roleblocker should have priority.
If a Lightning Rod is in play and the Roleblocker targets someone else, the Lightning Rod still occurs normally and nobody is roleblocked. If the Roleblocker targets the Lightning Rod, then the Lightning Rod does not activate.

Something to always be mindful is how killing a role works: killing doesn't stop the actions of the dead player.
For example, if a Cop investigated a player and was killed on that same night, they would still receive the result of their investigation even if they were about to leave the game. And if a Tracker followed that same Cop, they would see that the Cop visited someone.
Another example would be a Cultist recruiting a player. If someone killed the Cultist, they would still have managed to recruit that player to their faction.
On the other hand, if someone killed the recruitee, they would flip with their old alignment. That's because the recruitee wouldn't be the one executing an action, and per the rule above, killing happens before recruiting so they would leave the game before changing factions.
Dealing with replacements

There will be situations in which you’ll have to replace a player from your game.
If you receive a PM from a player saying they want to leave the game, and you are sure they won’t be able to play anymore, you should announce that decision as soon as possible in the main thread, to prevent their absence from influencing the remaining of the game. Please use the following format to announce replacements:
Code:
```
[highlight]<Player name> will be replaced[/highlight]
```
Another situation is when a player falls below the post requirement for a Day phase without providing a reason for it.

When this happens for the first time during the game:
At the start of the Night phase you should send that player a PM reminding them of their commitment to participate. At the same time, ask the first person in the replacement list to read the thread during the Night, because they might have to replace someone. That way, if the player does not reply to you the replacer has had enough time to catch up and be ready to join.

When this happens for the second time during the game, they should immediately be removed from the game and replaced by someone else. Again, you should message a person in the replacement list as early as possible, to give them time.

If a replacement is needed during a critical phase of the game, the gamerunner is allowed to pause it until they find a player to sub in.
In any case, once you find and confirm a replacement you should introduce them in the main thread following this format, giving the replacement's timezone and their indicated pronoun. The player being replaced need only be reference by name, no timezone or pronoun needed:
Code:
```
[highlight][Pronoun] <Player who will be replacing> - <Timezone> has replaced <Player who has been replaced>[/highlight]
```
As per our rules, the replacement can ask you to extend the Night in which they join for up to 48 hours. Please always make sure to check the replacement list rather than assuming the order; updates happen periodically as people ask to become replacements.

If you have any questions that aren't answered here, please ask them in the modchat or talk with a Facilitator; we will be happy to assist you.

Pedro · Oct 10, 2018

How to start and end phases

This section will help you complete every task necessary before a Day or Night phase can safely begin.

Starting a Day phase:

From Day 2 onwards, announce that night actions are locked in the game thread. The default wording is "Night actions are now locked", with the highlight tag. After this, players can no longer submit actions to you.
Determine the effects of the submitted night actions. Check the Resolving night actions section above for detailed instructions.
Send out PMs based on those actions, if applicable.
If a player who had permission to read and post in a private thread on Outer Mafia is now dead, let the Outer Mafia Team in the Modchat on Discord know (you can ping them by mentioning @Outer Mafia Team) so they can revoke their permission to post.

Prepare the post that will start the next Day and post it. You can use this template if you would like:

Code:

Flavor text of your choice
[highlight]<Player Name> has died![/highlight]
[quote]The role PM of whoever died. If multiple players died, each role PM stays between its own quote tags.[/quote]

[highlight]Day <Current Day Number> Begins[/highlight]
The list of remaining living players
The current number of votes necessary to reach a majority
The timer for the end of the current Day phase
Fireblend's vote tool for your game

Ask any dead player if they would like access to the spectator thread or if they would like to be a replacement for another game, if applicable.
Update your OP with a direct link to the post that started the current Day phase, and the names of the newly dead crossed out alongside with the Day in which they died.

Ending a Day phase:

Once the Day has ended either via majority or because the time ran out, post "Day <Current Day Number> Ends", with the highlight tag, to officially end the Day. This causes Fireblend’s vote tool to stop counting votes.
Check the vote count to see who received the most votes.
Post a copy of the final vote count in the thread as its own post.

Prepare the post that will end the current Day and post it. You can use this template if you would like:

Code:

Flavor text of your choice
[highlight]<Player Name> has died![/highlight]
[quote]The role PM of whoever died. If multiple players died, each role PM stays between its own quote tags.[/quote]

[highlight]Night <Current Night Number> Begins[/highlight]
Night <Current Night Number> ends in:
The timer for the end of the current Day phase
[highlight]Night actions are due 2 hours before the start of the next Day.[/highlight]

If a player who had permission to read and post in a private thread on Outer Mafia is now dead, let the Outer Mafia Team in the Modchat on Discord know (you can ping them by mentioning @Outer Mafia Team) so they can revoke their permission to post.
Ask any dead player if they would like access to the spectator thread or if they would like to be a replacement for another game, if applicable.
Update your OP with a direct link to the post that started the current Night phase, and the names of the newly dead crossed out alongside with the Night in which they died.

A Guide for Gamerunners

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie

Pedro

The Last Airbender is actually a great movie